Windsor & Maidenhead air quality petition triggers full council meeting
The efforts of one person to unite a community offers an example of local democracy in action, and shows increased support for improved air pollution monitoring.
An air quality petition aimed at the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead (RBWM) has closed with well over 2,000 signatures – enough to trigger a full council meeting.
The campaign was started by resident Thomas Wigley, who is calling for better monitoring of particulate matter, often considered to be the most dangerous form of air pollution in terms of human health.
‘This petition asks RBWM to increase particulates measurements in its five Air Quality Management Areas. I hope that we can now have constructive discussions with RBWM and get proper particulates monitoring. The petition is timely because the respected Francis Crick Institute has recently published breakthrough research results proving a link between PM2.5 particulates and lung cancer, and the UK’s Office for Environmental Protection recently wrote to DEFRA urging it to bring forward its PM2.5 target date,’ said Wigley.
‘It’s crazy to believe that a single particulates monitoring site in Maidenhead is enough for a Borough which covers 197 square kilometres and has its own local pollution hotspots. Deadly PM2.5 particles aren’t measured at all and that really concerns me. I would be particularly concerned if, for example, I lived in Holyport, which straddles the M4. This already busy motorway now has a one third increase in traffic capacity since it was upgraded to be a ‘Smart’ motorway,’ he continued.
Last month, the world’s worst cities for hazardous nitrogen dioxide pollution were revealed, with experts criticising global efforts at monitoring, labelling current infrastructure as inadequate.
Image: Tim Umphreys
In Shoreham by Sea we have a main road which is at capacity passing through the High St. and an AQMA with one secondhand monitoring machine which works erratically and an Environment Officer who is given no budget. The road is being subjected to a huge amount of high rise development with no improvements to traffic flow and air quality. As a local environment group we have campaigned for improvements, opposed the over-development. It would be wonderful if there was a body that could help smaller communities who don’t get the publicity or the assistance.
We have the same problem in Towcester. West Northants Council is busy approving thousands of new homes and enormous logistics warehouses with a road infrastructure that is already failing, and yet lorries still trundle through an air quality management area with no continuous monitoring at all! Just a few diffusion tubes for monthly average NO2. The Council suspects there’s a problem because they wrote to residents and businesses alongside the A5, and suggested they keep their windows closed! With large increases in traffic, the developers modelling shows only slight deterioration in air quality. Mr Wigley is right – we need continuous monitoring so that we know the background air quality and we will be able to measure the effects of developments.
It’s the same all over, Graham. Not enough monitoring. None at all where I live, nor where family and friends are in Devon and Cumbria. The busy roads are not just in the towns either.
And don’t forget the PM2.5 from wood burning. All set to go up this winter. And Windsor is not the only area to be without PM air quality monitoring. There are large rural areas across the UK that have none at all, on the assumption that countryside air is somehow empty, I suppose. And that no one lives there?