Breathe in, breathe out: from best to worst

This blog usually looks at ways of learning about the world without having to get on a plane. But this time let's compare air pollution in the world's cleanest country, Solomon Islands (once my home) and London (now my home). Words from Nicola Baird.

Guardian story here. The worst countries for toxic air were India,
with 133.7 deaths for every 100,000 people blamed on air pollution,
and Mynamar, where the rate is 230.6 deaths. 

From the Guardian:

People in the UK are 64 times as likely to die of air pollution as those in Sweden and twice as likely as those in the US, claims the World Health Organisation. 

 Britain, which has a mortality rate for air pollution of 25.7 for every 100,000 people, was also beaten by Brazil and Mexico – and it trailed far behind Sweden, the cleanest nation in the EU (a small irony as in Jan 2017 the Swedes were claiming that Stockholm's air pollution was as bad as Beijing). The US rate was 12.1 for every 100,000, Brazil’s was 15.8 and Mexico’s was 23.5, while Argentina was at 24.6.

This is my screensaver - a rural Solomon Island scene
about a 40 minute walk from the capital, Honiara's city
centre. Note that in the humid tropics even Londoners
like me walk slowly - and in the Solomons few people
can afford to own a vehicle (or are old enough to drive).

Good air v bad air
Years ago - when I was 26 - I spent two years working in the wonderful Pacific island country, Solomon Islands for Voluntary Service Overseas (the best thing I've ever done!). The country was gorgeous - dubbed "as beautiful above as it is below" thanks to its tropical forested islands, sunny skies, fresh trade winds by the coast, biodiversity and vibrant, fish-packed coral reefs. On working trips away from the capital, Honiara, I often saw dolphins, wild white cockatos, huge butterflies and flocks of fruit bats.

Solomon Islanders are rightly very proud of their country's bounty. I remember at one point the Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni suggested bottling their tropical forest oxygen and selling it to richer countries. The idea never came off, because air is air...

See this piece in the New Scientist from 27 Jan 1996.

But 25 years or so have past and now everyone's talking about dirty air - even me on the Jerry Vine show when he did a special broadcast this week from the Nags Head Market, Islington. And I'm currently working on two clean air projects for clients. Dirty air talk is hard to avoid when you live in London which is packed with diesel vehicles emitting particulates that are damaging everyone's health. Killing us slowly...

So what's Solomon Islands like? Few people drive in the Solomons, and there aren't many roads. There are no trains and a rare haphazard (private) bus service (more like the occasional truck) on the country's main islands. This means that people tend to cram into vehicles, go by boat or - more likely - walk. As a result on 18 May, 2017 the local media were able to announce something amazing:

It’s official: Solomon Islands has the cleanest air in the world (SIBC, Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation)

The World Health Statistics 2017 report released by the World Health Organisation found the country has the lowest concentrations of “fine particular matter in urban areas” in its air in the world.

The Solomons had a rating of 5.0, ahead of New Zealand (5.2), New Brunei Darussalam (5.4) and Australia (5.8).

It's not all good news for the Solomons: SIBC's report added: "Despite having the cleanest air, the country still falls behind on other development indicators, particularly in areas such as life expectancy, improved access to proper sanitation and rates of cancer.

• The average life expectancy of Solomon Islanders is 69.2 years, below the global average of 71.4 years. 
• Out of every 1000 babies born, WHO said its data showed 114 would die –though it was better than the global average of 212 deaths per 1000 babies born.
• The Hapi Isles has 22.1 health professionals for every 1000 people, well below the global average of 45.6 per 1000 people.
• WHO estimates 26.4 per cent of Solomon Islanders aged between 30 and 70 will die from either cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or respiratory disease, above the global average of 18.8 per cent.

And perhaps WHO should add thanks to climate change some of the country's 1,000 cays, atolls and islands are at risk of... disappearing. What will that mean for Solomon Islanders?

Stay calm

Learning to breathe calmly - smell the soup, cool the soup - is a central tenet of modern wellbeing gurus. Just as campaigning to clean up our air has become a key ingredient of modern town planning. And dare I say it, ignoring the consequences of climate change, sea level rise etc.

If there's a lesson from the Solomons then it's make your cities, towns and villages places where walkers rule. Except that's not quite how it felt even when I lived in Solomon Islands... Anyone who's ever been to Honiara recently will know that its one road along the seafront is completely traffic-choked, and not made easy for pedestrians to cross. But it's not a big country, or a big city, and it's only one road: and so the Solomons wins the clean air prize by default. It's fantastic the Solomns has the cleanest air in the world, but it's certainly not thanks to good city planning.

But here's hoping that crazy idea to bottle tropical forest oxygen might be suitable for gimmicky sales now. It's a lot better than selling natural sources like wildlife or trees. At least I think so - I'm slightly confused by the most recent episode of Dr Who which I watched last weekend which played around with this theme, and I don't want to ruin that plot twist.

When it comes to how to get clean air, what the Solomons does right (or not at all) is something we all need to start doing.

Lola (left) and Nell (right) with talented custom dancers
back in 2011 in Solomon Islands.

A little extra

"I can now picture the globe and all the countries and think about their different climates and realities. I learnt that in the Solomons the sky is much clearer, that might either be because of less pollution or where it is positioned. I found that it is a lot easier to breathe in a hotter place if you have asthma which is incredibly annoying as I do not like hot climates – they are too hot." Nell, 10 years after two months in Solomon Islands.

Because of climate change my family decided to stop flying. We decided that a return flight every 10 years would be a way of doing this. Our last flights were in 2011, when from June-September we took our daughters out of school and went to Solomon Islands for several months (via Australia). In the final post about that trip the girls summed up what they thought of that travel experience - lessons that have definitely taken them through GCSEs and A levels. The older, Lola, is now on a gap year learning French in Paris (reached by train) and plans to study politics at uni in September 2017. And over dinner it's not unusual for both girls to argue about who will be PM first: I don't think it's going to be a job share! Have a look at this post here, where Nell's quote above is taken from (clearly she figured out Honiara was less polluted than London).

8 ways to deal with air pollution – Delhi dilemmas

 Delhi is the world’s most polluted city. I think. London however has been shaping up nicely this January in its bid to reach toxic gold. Here’s my attempt to unpick the ridiculous suggestions mooted in a bid to help us all ‘beat London smog”. In case there is ANY doubt this is a parody. Words from Nicola Baird  (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

These doors at Senate House are the very ones that inspired
George Orwell's famouse Room 101 scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
My room 101 doesn't have rats.

1 READ THE EVENING STANDARD

Now lots of the ES is super sensible and covers the London Air Pollution saga well. It’s where I heard about London having breached its annual toxic limit by the fifth day of January 2017. But it also runs daft stories like A breath of fresh air: here’s6 ways to clean up your act and beat London’s toxic air from two of its regular feature writers – Susannah Butter and Phoebe Luckhurst. This piece is shameful because it wasn’t tongue in cheek. The ladies suggest  “REN’s flash defence anti-pollution spray creates a viscous layer that noxious chemicals will struggle to penetrate. It smells great too.”

Why does the news so often seem like an April Food at the moment: shouldn’t Butter and Phoebe be warning us that buying this stuff would be £24 badly spent? I remember writing an exposé about the Solomon Islands trying to flog tropical rainforest oxygen back in the 1990s…  Now I think the islanders had it right, Londoners are so daft they’d have sniffed up bottles of this and passed them round their Uber. PM10s are not going to be watered down by an imaginary body spray.

2 YOU NEED A FACEMASK & POLLUTION MONITORS

On the #airpollution stream on Insta there is plenty of smogporn (if that’s a thing yet), but also  brands who view air pollution as an opportunity– such as koolmask, hypeingham and metro-mask. There’s even a bedside alarm LaMetricTime which displays CO2 levels allowing you to watch the levels rising…

Got to admire capitalism because everything is an opportunity. Those masks aren’t going to help London tackle air pollution are they?

3 EAT WELL

Yup – eating avocado (vitamin D) and almonds (vitamin E) gives your body all the nutrients you need to fight toxic air pollution.  

I’ve read this. It must be right. It also gives zero thought whatsoever to how those pops of goodness arrived here (air freighted) or what damage avocado and super-thirsty almond plantations are doing where they are grown.

Written by me in 1998.

4 "GET IN THE CAR" & DRIVE TO SCHOOL

That was the advice from at least one school nurse to asthma sufferers. 

One of my daughters has had a tricky time with asthma and we’ve met a large number of asthma nurses. Some are great, but very few understood the big picture or factored in what it meant to be a child who likes to use their legs and eyes in the big outdoors…

It makes sense, because there are still a huge number of families who drive their kids to school, refusing to accept that their journey is not necessary. It's still an aspirational desire to drive.

I’ve had a car in the past and of course it'll be used it if it’s temptingly parked outside and you’re running late… but get rid of the car and you’ll always walk, or scooter, or bike to school which teaches your kids good habits (and burns off breakfast). If rates can justifably skyrocket (and i wish they wouldn't if it kills independent stores) then so too can road taxes or the cost of the right to drive in a city in a diesel powered car. (I should add that I'm not that impressed by private petrol or electric vehicles either)

5 SAY NO TO LETTING THE KIDS PLAY OUTSIDE

When environmental health officials are tricked (surely?) into saying it’s dangerous for kids to use the school playground be wary of following their advice.

Already most kids stay indoors far too much despite the indoor air pollutants from cooking, furniture, sprays and cleaning products create a toxic soup. They can’t be independent from a young age because of the dangers from cars knocking them over (not stranger danger). City kids need to know as much as possible about nature even if it is just jumping the weeds in the pavement cracks, pulling at last year’s hollyhocks languishing in the tree pits or hearing the blackbird singing on that house’s old TV aerial. Having a glimpse of even this diminished nature is what may help the kids figure out that life outdoors ought to be one of opportunity, not threat.

Front garden - there's a bird
in the apple tree.

6 DEALING WITH SUBSIDENCE

My poor Victorian home is subsiding. The only way insurers deal with this is waging war on anything green around the foundations, and so the buddleia and jasmine have to go.

It’s impossible for me to denude the bricks while my head is swirling with toxic London fog scenes and the sweet inner-city robin cheerily sings when it sees me heading towards its corner of the buddleia brandishing a bow saw.

7 SETTLE DOWN WITH NETFLIX

Watching The Crown on Netflix ought to cancel out visions of toxic smog… but no, in episode 4, in December 1952 there are a dreadful three days which flood hospitals and ultimately kill as many as 12,000 people during the Great Smog of London. 

Churchill is hopeless at coping with this, writing it off as British weather, an “act of God”. At least Sadiq Khan seems to be looking at our problem head on. Now he’s got to show the sort of leadership that no one has yet dared to do against the car lobby, and in particular diesel vehicles. Couldn’t we just do something radical like shake up the whole way Londoners move around for a trial phase and see if it made a difference?

8 SPOILING MY MARATHON TRAINING

Of course I’m not training to run the marathon, but I’ve heard the moans. Toxic air wrecks “Marathontraining plans” so the runners have to head to the indoor gym and cycle on stationary bikes and indoor running tracks, rather than plod pavements.

Wouldn’t it be great if the generation obsessed by bucket lists and meeting personal challenges could start working together to force politicians to make London’s air cleaner – and by default other cities cleaner as well? Because if they did within a year no one would ever have to cancel their training run. 

THE END
So where does that get us? Nine ways to clean up your act, or nine opportunities to speak up?  The only good seems to be that at last air pollution in London - and the impact cars, traffic (and airports) have on it - is at last being talked about by everybody, even if the messages aren't always clear. Next step is action. Please.

Why I’m taking a stand against Uber (with a nod to San Francisco)

Uber – a taxi service with a fab app – was born in San Francisco in 2010. By 2014 it had spread to 290 cities and had 8 million users worldwide. It’s primarily a city service, you don’t find Ubers in rural Britain yet. Ubering it home may seem like a great addition to our life, but look close and you’ll see why it’s a mighty bad habit for London. Words from Nicola Baird  (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

December fog, 2016, over Finsbury Park.

You’ll always remember your first Uber. Mine was a rainy night journey from Shoreditch to East London to a place my work colleague claimed was the ultimate cocktail bar. Turns out he was right (it’s the Bonneville Tavern, E5). We arrived at 10.30pm for a night of Twinkles. By the time I wanted to get home it was past midnight, the traditional hour that public transport parks up for the night. Another Uber ride was offered… but when I wobbled into the street I noticed a bus stop right by the bar. And there was at least one night bus that could take me all the way to my Finsbury Park home, and it was due in just10 minutes (admittedly not Uber’s two). When the bus blazed up I paid with my oyster - as painless, and habit-forming, as paying with the Uber app.

There was no one else on the 253 for a couple of stops, bar the driver. Perhaps everyone else took an Uber home? They might have done as last April it was worked out that every week in London 60,000 people download Uber on to their phone. I’ve been slow to this party, but did put “Sign up to Uber” on my 2017 new year’s resolution list.

Except I’ve changed my mind, because super-convenient Uber – with at least 25,000 drivers and 1.8 million users here in London - is a big part of the London transport problem. Not least because Uber’s target for London was 46,000 drivers (2016, not yet met).  How's that taking polluting vehicles off our roads? And what does it mean for traffic levels on the main roads which ought to be bus super highways, but are all too often traffic jams.

======

FACTS & FIGURES (2015-16)

Tube – 1.34 billion customers annually. Info. 

Bus – 9,300 vehicles operating on 675 routes. Info. 

Bus - More than 2 billion journeys made in London during 2015-16  Info. 

=======

Black cab driver Ray Coggin is interviewed on Islington Faces, see link. 

I didn’t get it at first. When I saw the black cab drivers blocked the roads around Southwark tube and City Hall in protest against UberX, I thought the old boys in their big black diesel cabs (eye-wateringly expensive and rarely with a card machine) clearly didn’t like the competition new technology brings. 

It wasn’t until I watched Episode 4 of Netflix’s The Crown, spellbound by the 1952 Great Smog of London and suddenly began to make the connections. It’s thought that 12,000 people died as a result of those three foggy days, many as a result of the damage done to their lungs by the air pollution (a thick yellow sulphoric-tasting smog). 

The resulting Clean Air Act of 1956 is probably the birth of the modern environmental movement. But 60 + years on our lovely London is still polluted. The difference is that we can’t see what’s toxic.

In fact London’s air quality is so compromised by vehicle pollution from diesel fuel that its annual limit was broken just five days into the new year. That’s why there will be 9,500 early deaths in London during 2017. And a lot of suffering: think asthma, cancer and even increasing numbers of dementia and Alzheimers’ diagnosis.

Hot air balloon murals at Finsbury Park tube station.

What's hard

I’ve watched my London-raised younger daughter – and her school friends – wheeze with asthma. I’ve seen my mum cope with lung cancer surgery. You’d think there’s nothing harder than trying to help someone breathe when they cannot. But there is, and it’s being brave enough to do something about the toxic air pollution that’s blighting London.
 

As more than 90 per cent of Londoners live within 400 metres of a bus stop it’s a shame that the London bus fleet (9,300 vehicles) is still mostly diesel-powered. Even if all London's buses were electric - it doesn’t totally resolve the pollution problem. Nor does having an electric car (and we know the win of free parking in central London and not having to the pay the Congestion charge etc).

Only walking and cycling are properly clean ways of getting around our dirty city.

Now when a journey seems too far, and taking a bus or tube too inconvenient, Uber maths takes over. Unfortunately when it comes to cleaning up London’s air quality Uber is a far bigger part of the transport problem than you’d think. Here’s why: not only does a handy Uber ride encourage us to take a car, it is also taking passengers off the bus and tube network – and away from Tfl which does at least have motivation to clean up London. If travel numbers go down then buses will get parked. Night services withdrawn. Permanently. Without an alternative guess what will happen to Uber fares if there’s no competition? (Answer: fares will go up). And London’s ability to crack down on vehicle pollution will lose direction.

 Anything from San Francisco arrives with a buffer around it implying it’s clean, modern, right-on, hip. And yes it’s certainly meeting our lazy genes’ needs.

But if you want London’s air safe to breathe it’s not smart to be an Uber addict. 2017 is the year to step out of the car and say: Uber is not the best way to get wherever you’re going. It’s just another way of messing up London’s already toxic air.

• ·      Useful info about Uber (critical, but admiring) see:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/27/how-uber-conquered-london

·      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/02/majority-of-uber-drivers-in-london-work-part-time-study-says/

·      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/19/black-cabs-must-face-up-to-reality---its-all-uber-now/

Air pollution - comparing London and Paris

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. OK this post includes a little mention of Paris (reached by train) but it's mostly about what's got to be done to clean up our cities which are being so polluted by diesel. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Nicola with her daughter in Paris. We drank coffee and talked air pollution.

My 18 year old daughter has moved to Paris, so just occasionally I visit. In August I noticed that it felt much more polluted than my bit of London. It's less green than London, but it is also smaller. When you blew your nose unspeakable blackness appeared.

In October and December my daughter would What's App to say that Paris was so polluted today that it was free to use the metro.

Houses, pedestrians, diesel buses all mixed up in London - the result is poor
air quality that's actually killing people early.

So I was surprised to learn that London busted it's annual air pollution limits in just five days - FIVE - into the new year on 5 January 2017.  You can read all about it in this Guardian report here.

"By law, hourly levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide must not be more than 200 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) more than 18 times in a whole year, but late on Thursday this limit was broken on Brixton Road in Lambeth."

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) comes from diesel engines (including buses, vans and idling diesel cars).
Air pollution is known to cause nearly 6,000 early deaths in London. It's now also thought that people who live close to busy roads are more likely to develop Alzheimer's.

Just to be clear that's not five normal days of traffic - it's five days that actually includes a new year's day Sunday (1st) and a bank holiday Monday (2nd). When London's air is so toxic it seems amazing that we're not all screaming to sort it out. I think London's Mayor Sadiq Khan is on it - but rumours of low-emission zone bus routes doesn't sound like enough for this silent killer.

Meanwhile in Paris the mayor, Anne Hildago, has promised to ban diesel vehicles (by 2025 along with Athens, Madrid and Mexico City) and now, in January, she has promised to halve the number of private cars in the city and keep roads along the Seine closed. An electric tramway is also planned.

Paris is in a strange state at the moment - there are emergency powers in place which makes change, perhaps, a little easier. Closing roads might help reduce the likelihood of runaway lorries through busy thoroughfares. It will also make Paris a very much less polluted city. Win. Win.

I've not had a car in London since my early 20s. I've managed to raise two children without one and saved £1000s of pounds in rental/purchase fees, maintenance, insurance, parking, fuel (petrol!) and fines (obligatory in London's congested city). That doesn't prove much, but it's not been a sacrifice, it's been a boost to the whole family's quality of life: all of us know our way around on foot well, and are possibly fitter and slimmer than our car-owning contemporaries. The one drawback is the air pollution. It gets us all, however little we've contributed to the toxic mess.

CAPTION: Russell Selway at Cycle Surgery Highbury: “I hate working on Holloway Road: the air pollution is horrendous. If you go into the shop you can see the packaging gets covered with dust and dirt by the end of every day. We clean it off every day (see photo of boxes). But the dirt and grime means we can’t sell white clothing in the shop because it doesn’t stay clean long enough.The noise is horrendous too. You can never hear anything on the phone because sirens are going all the time… It’s police and ambulances through the red light. And there are the buses. The stuff they chuck out is horrendous! Never warm up behind a bus… I think diesel should be banned." THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM AN INTERVIEW PUBLISHED ON ISLINGTON FACES, READ IT HERE.

What next?

This year I'm going to be putting a bit more energy into calling out the nonsense I see about air pollution and cars. For instance when you hear the air is polluted, it doesn't mean the kids shouldn't play out. It means you need to radically rethink how and where you drive. Everyone loves their cars, and always has a reason to be on the roads. But this pretence that "my journey is more important than your journey" really has to stop. Let 2017 be the year that happens. Good luck to all those campaigning on air quality wherever you are in the world.

If you'd like to read more about cars, have a look at my first book THE ESTATE WE'RE IN: who's driving car culture published back in 1998. It's still available as an ebook.

Over to you

What do you do to reduce air pollution? What should government do? What needs to be thought about carefully? Or is any action more important for everyone's health?