New air quality ‘supersite’ opens in Lewisham

A new air quality monitoring ‘supersite’ has opened in Lewisham, South London.

The site, which is located in the King’s College London, Honor Oak Park sports ground, allows researchers to gather long term and intensive, higher-quality data on urban air pollution.

It’s been funded as part of a £6m investment into three new air quality supersites — the other sites are in Birmingham and Manchester — established by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The three sites will help to improve the understanding of different sources of air pollution and be able to determine whether they originate from emissions within London such as traffic or residential wood burning, or from further away.

The supersite also includes new instruments that detect a variety of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals.

Dr David Green from the School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences at King’s College London said: ‘This new facility dramatically improves our capacity to understand the sources and processes leading to the build-up of these harmful pollutants in our atmosphere.

‘This will help further our understanding of the current health impacts and how effective present and future policies are at reducing these.’

Earlier this month, AirQualityNews spoke to Dr Gary Fuller, a senior lecturer in Air Pollution Measurement at King’s College and also leads the university’s London Air Quality Network, which has been at the cutting edge of UK research into air pollution since the mid-1990s.