Air pollution has been in the news a lot recently. In November, the European Court ruled that the UK Government has not been doing enough to tackle the level of nitrogen dioxide in our cities and they must now produce a plan to reduce pollution from diesel vehicles "as soon as possible". With the Government's current plans, the UK will not meet legal limits for nitrogen dioxide until 2030, which will be 20 years after the original deadline.
Three weeks later, the Environmental Audit Committee published a report highlighting that air pollution is the biggest public health problem after smoking and that it causes an estimated 29,000 premature deaths every year. That equates to 250 premature deaths a year in Leicester alone. It also causes a lot of ill-health – it aggravates asthma, contributes to lung cancer and heart disease and impairs children's lung development. MPs say that a generation is at risk of having its health "seriously impaired" as a result of the Government's failure to act.
At the same time, the Government has announced a programme of road building and our city council has lowered the car parking charges in the city centre, which is likely to result in more people choosing to drive into town and more air pollution.
The inability of our politicians to join the dots is astounding – some shout about the damage that motor vehicles are doing to our health while others clamour for more roads. To reduce air pollution, we need to make it easier and more attractive to walk, cycle and use public transport. However, we will also have to find ways of persuading people to leave their cars at home. This will not always be popular but it is necessary – the alternative is to continue blighting our health.
The problem is that the Government and our city council are focussing on cities as economic powerhouses, where the need to move people and goods around quickly takes priority over everything else. They forget that cities are also a human habitat. Most of us live in cities and I suspect that even more of us work in them.
Many children grow up in cities. MPs have said that air filtration systems should be fitted in schools next to busy roads but this will not protect people when they are at home or at work or out and about. If we are going to clean up our air and make our cities healthier for everyone who lives in them, we need to stop the pollution at source: we need fewer cars.
Hannah Wakley is a member of the Leicester Green Party
