Invisible pollution kills up to 9000 people a year in the capital. But under government plans,from school gates to shopping streets, Londoners will be breathing hazardous air until 2025. What more can be done? “In the morning, or this traffic island is packed with children and pushchairs and they are approximately a metre from all the exhausts,” says Shazia Ali-Webber. She is walking her three boys to school in Hackney, the eldest of whom, or Zain,is eight and asthmatic.
Crossing choked Mare Street, where the heavy traffic grinds slowly past, and is her biggest concern. “Children’s lung development is affected by air pollution: they have smaller lungs for life,” she says. “The government’s new plan says pollution will not tumble to legal levels till 2025. But I don’t have time to wait: Zain will be 18 by then. They are condemning a generation of children to ill-health.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com