On my way to school pickup one smoggy, sweltering summer afternoon, I heard an older woman just ahead of me telling two small boys they’d have to go straight home that day. “It’s good to be outside,” she said, “but sometimes the air is not good air.”
– Beth Gardiner: Choked
As soon as I had gotten out of the heavy air of Rome and from the stink of the smoky chimneys thereof, which being stirred, poured forth whatever pestilential vapours and soot they had enclosed in them, I felt an alteration of my disposition.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger
Some describe sixteenth-century Bolivia, where the Potosí silver mine was the largest in the world at the time, as the start of the Anthropocene – the geological era in which human activity began to have a significant impact on the natural world. The air would never be the same.
– Tim Smedley: Clearing the Air
The last act when life comes to a close is the letting out of the breath. And hence, its admission must have been the beginning.
– Aristotle: On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing
Introduction
When I originally started researching the subject of air pollution, at the beginning of March 2019 – driven by personal health issues to produce something in-depth for my blog that would, hopefully, also heighten awareness of this worrying subject (especially in this rural Elysium that is Warwickshire’s Feldon: where defilement of any kind probably seems at its most improbable), I had aimed to put the resultant article to bed in time for World Environment Day on 5 June 2019 (whose theme, this year, was, fittingly, #BeatAirPollution). However, those “personal health issues” – exacerbations of September 2017’s allergy incidents – decided that this was not going to be. So, umpteen days later, there I was, now, also having missed my secondary goal… – this time, of Clean Air Day, on 20 June 2019 (the same day as the wonderfully-named, wonderfully-appropriate, Dump The Pump Day)!
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
– Douglas Adams: The Salmon of Doubt
Now, here I am, at the time of publication, still searching for a relevant tertiary target that I might actually (pretend to have) hit… Oops. However, if it’s any sort of condolence, the Days of The Year website tells me that the whole of this month is Plastic Free July: so I still have a little legroom (as of 23 July 2019 – when it looked like I might actually draw to a conclusion)!
Background
In 1961, the year of my birth (and a subsequent six-month struggle for breath; and, therefore, for survival), a sage meteorologist by the name of RS Scorer stated (quite sardonically, it has to be said – although correctly) that “our economy depends on the making of pollution”. Or, as Stephen T Holgate et al would write nearly forty years later:
The Industrial Revolution brought to Western Civilization prosperity and social changes that altered the direction of nations. The downside of such industrial proliferation was the extensive use of coal as an energy source and the severe air pollution that accompanied this….
The impact that this pollution had on health was profound and led to the introduction of stringent emission control measures in many countries with attendant improvement in these health indices….
As we approach the second millennium, air pollution of a different kind is with us again – that derived from the combustion of oil productions and, in particular, vehicle fuels.
In the decades in between – although you could say that the winds have changed; that we are now moving closer to cleaning the air that we breathe, rather than darkening it – I still believe more effort has been invested in propaganda and disguise than it has in action. And this, sadly, remains the case… – especially when, for instance, our judiciary seems incapable of understanding the deadly consequences of allowing Heathrow’s third runway (or maybe just doesn’t care…) – and yet officially labelling a nine-year-old child’s tragic death as being caused by such (illegal) air pollution (albeit as just one of 40,000 such early deaths every year in the UK) seems infinitely beyond their grasp.
When I first heard the latter sad news, Macbeth’s reaction to his wife’s death sprang to mind… – and stood impregnated there for its many relevances:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– Shakespeare: Macbeth (V.v.19-28)
Encountering RS Scorer’s speech, however, was happenstance of the finest kind: an article of valuable jetsam caught randomly by my eye; rather than a particle of pollution or pollen caught by one of the detectors now littering the Bardic residence (more of which later) – both literary specks, though, having the capability to become fertilized deep within my enquiring mind. That these more recent words bumped into and then meshed with some of Will's finest should come as no surprise, of course: firstly, because of my immersion in – and love of – the greater part of his writing; secondly, because of his marvellous universality, his magical applicability to anything that may occur at any time, anywhere.
Strange, though, that the majority of people are discussing this fateful topic of air pollution (if/when they are) to all intents and purposes as if it were new/s – with publishers consequently issuing a compressed flurry of books and articles on the subject (some of which I shall quote from). For instance: the cross-party trio of Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas and Laura Sandys wrote in the Guardian in April that “An increasing number of people, young and old, see that the way we run our economy is damaging our climate, our environment and our society…” – reinforcing Scorer and Holgate’s claims: which can only, therefore, be a good thing. Unfortunately, the emissions they concentrate on are only one part of the picture (plastic, of course, being a great deal more visible).
Although they may seem to be two very different issues, climate change and air pollution are closely interlinked, so by reducing air pollution we also protect the climate. Air pollutants include more than just greenhouse gases – principally carbon dioxide but also methane, nitrous oxide and others – but there’s a big overlap: the two often interact with each other.
– UN Environment: Air pollution and climate change: two sides of the same coin
It doesn’t help that, nationally, it feels as if our politicians – excluding the aforementioned Caroline Lucas and a handful of others – haven’t even taken the first step in acknowledging that there is anything wrong with the planet we live on (and so desecrate). When they have, though, they have then done their very best(?) to make things worse:
Since 2010, this government has built a bonfire out of the measures designed to cut emissions. Zero carbon homes targets have been scrapped. Onshore wind has been effectively banned. Solar power has been shafted. The Green Investment Bank has been flogged off. Fracking has been forced on communities who have rejected it. Ministers champion the drop in our domestic carbon dioxide emissions – but they neglect to mention the true scale of our impact. Between 1997 and 2015, our total carbon footprint – taking into account everything we import and consume, as well as what we produce – declined by a pitiful 3.8%.
– Caroline Lucas: Parliament must declare a climate emergency – not ignore it
Even representatives of Extinction Rebellion, who recently met with Michael Gove, appear to be making little impact – despite the environment minister having recently (at the time of writing) undergone something of a ‘green’ conversion – “Clare Farrell, one of the Extinction Rebellion activists who met Gove, said: ‘It was less shit than I thought it would be, but only mildly.’”
So, as Scorer forewarned, nearly sixty years ago:
We do not [apply a readily available solution] because we do not want it enough: we do not want it because we are, as people, not sufficiently aware of the benefits of clean air, and of how dirty our air is.
Thus these opening words… of a book published only three years ago:
Most of us probably take clean air for granted and feel that getting out for a ‘breath of fresh air’ is bound to be good for our health. Sadly, Britain’s air is not as fresh as we’d like to think. Air pollution is an invisible killer – it is far more severe than most people realise and the main sources are all around us. All parts of the country can be affected; the remotest corners of the countryside as well as our towns and cities…. Poor air quality is a public health crisis that potentially affects everyone yet is largely unknown or ignored.
It certainly affects me – hence my interest; hence this essay. But I am fairly sure that I am not the only one (no-one is that special): even if am a member of a select minority. Before I focus in a little more on Tysoe, though, and the apparent Garden of Eden that surrounds us, here are a few more emphatic “opening words” – this time introducing a series of papers delivered at a conference in Sheffield, way back in 1956:
The problem of air pollution arises from the fact that the cost of curing it is not directly borne by those who would benefit from its cure. This applies whether the pollution comes from an individual householder’s smoky chimney or from a large industrial boiler or furnace.
– MW Thring (editor): Air Pollution
However pessimistic I (and Mr Thring) may sound, moves are afoot – albeit small and slow ones… – with so many of these remaining as un(der)funded proposals in the hands of academics: their ‘expert’ advice all too inconvenient; or, if fully funded, their crucial results (deliberately) ignored. It does not help that their voices are also all too easily drowned out by commercial – but seemingly personal – trends (such as open fires and wood-fired stoves); as well as industrial trickery (test-result-tweaking devices installed on cars; or plain and deliberate flouting of the law…).
Breathe, breathe in the Tysoe air (I)
Our victory at the [Gladman] planning hearing [on 8 January 2014] was led by a full-frontal charge of sustainability – and this could be our sole chance (until, perhaps, legislation catches up), as a group, to develop something with this as its lead objective. Couple this with a power-generating wind-turbine, or two, on Tysoe Hill, and Tysoe would become a shining, green beacon: generating profit for its residents, as well as power; and publicity (of the good kind) for a community that actually practises what it preaches.
– The Bard of Tysoe: What do we want? When do we want it? Never…
A large part of the problem – that of control or implementation – stems from the fact that air pollution does not obey political boundaries (for instance… red dust from the Sahara coating our car bonnets; or the output of Polish coalworks tinting the air with greyness); nor does it only affect those who can afford to protect themselves from it. In fact, it has a neat tendency to most hurt the poor and the weak.
In an essay that aims to keep within the parish bounds, where possible, this may seem quite irrelevant – especially if coal miners with ‘black lung’ spring to mind; or Holmes and Watson parting a thick ‘pea-souper’ in the hunt for some heinous criminal gang. But even Tysoe has its relative poor; and, being disabled, I suppose I must nominate myself as a member of its weak – especially as there is no doubt that something in the parochial air is currently causing my body great distress (over and above any existing disability); something which has prompted this deep and lasting interest in the matter – which has now grown yet deeper, yet further, into something of a scientific investigation – as the limitations this “something” places on me become ever more constricted… – hoping that, eventually, in parallel with the astute, caring, and thoughtful staff at Tysoe and Kineton Surgeries, I may reach a more practical and long-term solution than that of downing yet more tablets, capsules and sprays; wearing fine filtration masks outside (a rare event – being outside, that is…); and relying on a chorus of boxy white air purifiers humming away thoughtfully when home… – or, of course, simply transforming myself into even more of a recluse than I have already become.
At least in most of South Warwickshire we do not have to cope with the horrors John Evelyn described in his 1661 masterwork Fumifugium; or The inconveniencie of the aer and smoak of London dissipated… – although, three-hundred years on, there remain many “poor and weak” in Asian cities that still do…
…breathe nothing but an impure and thick Mist, accompanied by a fuliginous and filthy vapour, which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences, corrupting the lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their Bodies, so that Catarrs, Phthisicks, Coughs and Consumptions, rage more in this one City, than in the whole Earth besides.
Present-day London offers no improvement, either (yet); and, as a whole…
…Air pollution continues to plague the United Kingdom … Children, older persons and people with pre-existing health conditions are at grave risk of mortality, morbidity and disability, with magnified risks among the poor and minorities.
– UN Human Rights Council (September 2017)
Note
I will – because of the generic term ‘air pollution’ and its specific effects on me – be concentrating on the mainly negative human responses to those particular molecules and particles that defile the air we breathe. But, only a moment’s thought is required to conclude that these “molecules and particles” must also have detrimental impacts on the animals we have so far kept out of extinction’s harm (mostly by accident). Not just those on land; nor those domesticated – either as pets, or for food… – but those somehow surviving in the plastic-pondweed-saturated waterways: where airborne pollutants – having been dissolved in, or captured by, the rain – now trickle slowly seaward. One only has to think of acid rain to realize that our trees also suffer; along with our neatly-planted shrubs and other flora. Just imagine how improved the life of the greenhouse-raised daffodil must be compared to those spread along the hard shoulder of some semi-urban dual-carriageway.
Smoke gets in your eyes
Long gone are the days of those week-long pea-soupers (in the UK, anyway) – London’s five-day Great Smog of 1952 being a much-needed wake-up call: one which eventually led to the UK’s Clean Air Act (1956). Gone, too, are many of our coal-fired power stations; and, on 31 May 2019, the country celebrated (or should have done) a fortnight of coal-free electricity generation; with ‘green’ energy responsible for much of its replacement (28% of the total for 2018). Slowly, slowly, private and company car drivers are seeing the wisdom of moving to electric cars, as well [something I hope to investigate in a subsequent essay]. So – with more and more people successful even at giving up smoking… – well, what on Earth is it that I’m ranting on about?
Give me particulars
Poor air [is] not confined to the history books. In fact, there are more pollution particles in the air now than during London’s Great Smog. The difference is that the particulate matter (PM) from modern pollution sources is too small to see…. The latest estimate from the WHO [World Health Organization] is that 4.2 million people die from outdoor air pollution annually [with] nine out of ten people around the globe now [breathing] air containing high levels of pollutants.
– Tim Smedley: Clearing the Air
Pollution of the atmosphere relates to increased levels of ‘trace’ gases and aerosols that are normally present, in unpolluted air, in relatively minute quantities. Air pollution occurs when the concentrations of one or more of these trace components increases to levels that can cause harm, or in some cases, when synthetic gases or particles are released into the atmosphere.
There are numerous gases and aerosols in polluted air but a small number of relatively common atmospheric pollutants have long been of concern because of their serious health effects, coupled with their widespread nature. Most of these key pollutants are gases, in particular the oxides of both Nitrogen (NOx) and Sulfur (SOx) [as well as NH3]; the other main category of problematic air pollutants is fine particulate matter (PM), mostly from combustion processes.
– John Rieuwerts: An Air that Kills
The body senses trouble and knows it must respond. Something alien has arrived, something threatening. A tiny particle, deep inside the lung. The soldiers that rush to fight it wield a weapon that’s potent, but dangerous: a reaction powerful enough to destroy many invaders, but capable of turning against its master too. Able to leave this battlefield and journey through the body. Unleashed now, the cells rush from the lung, into the bloodstream. Still fighting their fight, wielding their weapons, but far now from the enemy for whom it was intended. The weapon that is at the root of so much that ails us: inflammation. Thickening the walls of arteries, so they grow a little narrower each day. Thickening the blood itself. Until, eventually, a clump forms from the thickness. A clot. Floating through the body until it catches somewhere, comes to rest. Blocking the flow of blood, of life. To the heart, perhaps, or the brain. The original invader is long gone now, but the cascade of consequences it set off is only just beginning.
– Beth Gardiner: Choked
Note
Rather than try and explain in fine detail what “fine particulate matter (PM)” is; where it comes from; and how it harms us… may I suggest a temporary diversion to Particulate Matter (PM) Basics on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website? This is part of their wonderful Criteria Air Pollutants information – it is therefore worth drilling down a little into NOx and SOx, etc. as well… – and explains all you need to know clearly and concisely about the dangers of breathing in “not good air”.
(The particles I am mostly interested in are PM10 – “transported deep into the bronchi and bronchioles of the lungs”, states Rieuwerts – and PM2.5: which “can travel all the way down to the alveoli, the tiny air sacs at the end of the finest lung passages”. They can therefore enter the bloodstream; with some of the finest being “deposited in the brain”.)
Breathe, breathe in the Tysoe air (II)
Ye who amid this feverish world would wear
A body free of pain, of cares a mind;
Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air;
Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke
And volatile corruption, from the dead,
The dying, sick’ning, and the living world
Exhal’d, to sully heaven’s transparent dome
With dim mortality….
While yet you breathe, away! the rural wilds
Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales,
The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze
That fans the ever undulating sky;
A kindly sky! whose fost’ring power regales
Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.
Find then some woodland scene, where nature smiles
Benign, where all her honest children thrive.
– John Armstrong: The Art of Preserving Health
We live in a remote village, with limited public transport, keen to be away from the town- and city-fed buzz of 21st-century civilization. And yet, even here, with our cottages (supposedly) surrounded by those Elysian Fields (see below), there is a price (or two) to be paid. Firstly, disconnected from the national gas grid, most of us must rely on heating oil (almost chemically identical to diesel): which – compared to that unattainable natural gas – increases “climate change impacts and harmful air pollution”.
Secondly, rather than walk the short distances traversing the three Tysoes, relishing and inhaling the (ostensibly) fresh rural air – mainly, I assume, because we are so used to driving, because of our isolation (“People often [using] the car because it is there”) – some of us (although please see below) pull our hefty diesel 4x4s out of our drives, lazily nipping to Bart’s for the morning paper; or – much worse – to drop our children at school or pre-school (and not always as a stop on the way to work…); engines sometimes idling expensively and illegally whilst parents natter idly through the fumes… – some of them even holding onto younger children; some carrying them, pregnant with expectation.
For those who have a successful birth, air pollution raises the risk of pneumonia among under-fives and lifelong lung conditions such as asthma. According to the WHO, 570,000 children under five die each year across the world from respiratory infections such as pneumonia, while up to 14 per cent of children aged over five currently report asthma symptoms, almost half of them related to air pollution. [The WHO also suggests that warming temperatures and ever-rising carbon dioxide levels may increase pollen levels, making asthma rates even worse.]
– Tim Smedley: Clearing the Air
Children in the UK are exposed to more than 60 per cent of their daily air pollution intake during the school day and their journeys to and from school, according to new research.
The study by Unicef UK and academics from Queen Mary University of London monitored a group of children over 24 hours to find out at what times they were most exposed to pollution during a typical school day.
The charity warned that these peak periods of exposure at school and on the school run are damaging the health of thousands of children across the UK, despite accounting for only 40 per cent of their time each day….
The study also analysed data from the World Health Organisation and the Office of National Statistics to estimate the number of children growing up in areas with unsafe levels of particulate matter…:
• Around 1 in 3 babies are growing up in areas of the UK with unsafe levels of particulate matter – nearly 270,000 babies under the age of one in the UK.
• An estimated 1.6 million under-fives are growing up in areas of the UK with unsafe levels of particulate matter – one third of all children from birth to five in the UK.
• At least 4.5 million children in the UK are growing up in areas with unsafe levels of particulate matter – 30 per cent of 0-18 year olds in the UK.
The WHO estimates that over 70 per cent of towns and cities in the UK have unsafe levels of fine particulate matter.
– Nursery World: Children inhaling toxic air in the classroom and on school run
To be honest, less roads travelled by diesel- (especially) and petrol-fuelled vehicles would contribute enormously to reducing such pollution… – but, as I wrote earlier, any thoughts of sustainability (which, for example, links fighting the climate crisis with reducing pollution) apparently flew out of the NDP committee’s collective minds shortly after entering (perhaps): leaving no susceptible trace. We should therefore ensure that villagers are not driving to the pub/Bart’s/school/nursery and back when they could walk.
– The Bard of Tysoe: My answers to the Neighbourhood Development Plan questionnaire…
It’s often said that air pollution is invisible, insidious, wreaking harm unbeknownst to its victims. But this is also true: Diesel smells. Its smoke is thick and chalky, giving weight to the air.
– Beth Gardiner: Choked
Having learned the risks that such children and unborn babies face, some (few) parents are fighting back. And we may therefore wish to implement some of their schemes locally… – once we have woken up to the ongoing harm even a single speck of black carbon can initiate. (And please don’t fall into the trap of believing you and your most precious goods are protected once the windows are up, and the climate control – oh! if only it were only this easy…! – is on at full tilt: “The air inside cars can be 15x worse than just a few meters away”.)
But it’s not just these obvious(?) emissions (excluding any ‘hot air’ that may also be generated…) we should be worrying about [even when we all suddenly see the light; convert; and start driving electric cars (when absolutely needed, of course) powered by glorious Edge Hill wind turbines]:
A recent European survey noted that wear aerosols [such as tyre particles and brake dust] were approaching and would soon exceed exhaust aerosols near roadways, with uncertain health impacts.
– Thomas A Cahill: I Can Breathe Clearly Now
I know we are lucky, as a village, in that our school is set back from Main Street: literally watched over and protected by our splendid church and its greenery; but – somewhere between the toddlers’ ‘walking bus’ to and from the Old Fire Station, and those having to be shipped in from further away – there has to be a healthier way of arriving and departing. Maybe – considering our single-road-straight-through layout – something like a Filter-Café-Filtré isn’t a pragmatic answer. But it is an idea, at least! But, until all traffic is electrically- or even hydrogen-powered, we should consider, and then implement, anything which prevents damaging our precious children’s developing lungs. For instance – in a village once renowned for its elm trees – we could be planting a great deal more trees, filling in those remaining gaps: mopping up some of our current emissions; and even cooling the air as the climate crisis unfolds: heating, and hurting, our globe.
The absence of ashes will hurt at least as much as the absence of elms. Then, when the oak trees fall, what will we do?
– The Bard of Tysoe: My answers to the Neighbourhood Development Plan questionnaire…
Even in an relatively arboreal village like Tysoe, there will always be room for improvement: for instance, surrounding ourselves and our children – at home, in the classroom, and in the office – with quasi-jungles of houseplants.
That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet
– Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (II.ii.43-45)
Restoring/rewilding some of our intensively-farmed countryside: reinserting rich hedgerows in fields of ridge-and-furrow that were erased to make way for the needs and machinery of the twentieth century would also make a huge difference.
But breathe his faults so quaintly
Air pollution causes 1 in 9 deaths. It is the most important environmental challenge of our time, and yet huge parts of the world still lack access to information about current air quality conditions.
Now, low-cost sensor technologies have kickstarted a revolution which can bridge this information gap: by making air quality sensors available at an accessible price point, communities around the world are seizing the opportunity to take their local air quality into their own hands, and reveal this invisible killer.
– IQAir: The challenge of our time
As I mentioned above, the outside world and I are currently not on best terms. I have therefore barricaded myself inside the house, building a wall of air purifiers around me – helping with indoor sources as well as outdoor – through which I occasionally peek. There are also meteorological and atmospherical apps; and those which monitor my (remaining) health as well as measure my (decreasing) fitness with the help of pulse oximeters and peak flow meters; smartwatches and -phones; plus, of course, strategically-located air quality gauges replacing those once ubiquitous flickering scented candles! – all woven together with a skein of power and USB cables (as well as a vintage serial one that connects the most sophisticated and industrial device to an occasional spreadsheet on my Chromebook).
Venturing into the village or beyond – a more serious engagement with the whatever-it-is-that-harms-me (see below), floating alongside the necessary oxygen and its complementary nitrogen, argon, etc. – and I risk provoking instant eye watering (despite saline washes and preventative Sodium Cromoglicate drops); the rapid sealing up of my mouth (then nose, then chest) with thick mucus created by sacrificial, overactive mast cells (despite prophylactic and acute antihistamine tablets – with Sodium Cromoglicate again, this time as a spray, being added in to the inhaled mix); and – should I react too slowly, or I am simply overwhelmed by the number of allergens, gases, particulates and suspensions I have to fight – a terrifying consequential asthma attack (despite my pink, prophylactic Sereflo spray) – this treated, initially, with that familiar emblem of the blue Salbutamol inhaler.
I did manage to leave the house an hour or so before sunrise (05:28) on 5 May 2019, for International Dawn Chorus Day (which was glorious): my Flow analyser recording a sharp rise in air pollutants, though – especially particulates PM2.5 and (even greater) PM10 – as I reached the church (for much-needed temporary rest) and the previous boundary of the village (where yet another ill-needed small estate rises from the fertile Feldon fields: dissipating dangerous drifts of soil, cement, etc.). My Flow also showed greater-than-background activity on the way out (perhaps because the “wear aerosols [and] exhaust aerosols” of the regular daytime traffic flow, via Main Street, still loitered): much more than the low (green-coloured) return along Back Lane and Sandpits Road.
My dad was really upset about my readings this morning. He wondered why it took someone like me to discover the rise in particulates (even on a Bank Holiday Sunday); and why schools didn’t monitor such things themselves as standard. He has a point – and I shall use it: especially as he was a teacher/deputy/head for so long; and loved taking the kids outside to play football and cricket, etc.. What are we doing to our children?!?
– Personal communication (5 May 2019)
But it‘s not just the children…
According to recent estimates, up to 5-10% of the US population suffer from asthma. Marked increases in asthma death and morbidity have been observed in the USA and Europe in recent years. There is substantial epidemiologic evidence demonstrating that exposure to increased levels of ambient air pollutants is associated with these increases in asthma morbidity. Among the pollutants of interest are ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and respirable particulate matter [see above]. Because asthma is characterized by increased airway reactivity, eosinophilic inflammation and association with allergy, information regarding the effect of pollutants and these symptoms is of great interest.
– David B Peden: Controlled Exposures of Asthmatics to Air Pollutants (from Holgate et al: Air Pollution and Health)
The failure of any or all of these medical bodyguards, and my hands now reach instinctively for the pair of (easier-to-use-than-EpiPens) Emerade adrenaline autoinjectors, carried always in my ever-expanding, self-medicating rucksack. Hopefully, these give me the time I need to keep breathing (and yes: I grok how ironic that is), before an ambulance appears… – or it’s just all over bar the fat man wheezing (preferably attached to an oxygen mask). (This pollution ‘stuff’ really is a matter of life or death. And, yes: that includes you.)
The deaths of many people every year are undoubtedly being caused by air pollution, although we’ll never have an exact number. But all of our lives are being shortened, or worsened, by air pollution. If we want it to stop, we have to fight back.
– Tim Smedley: Clearing the Air
Every species can smell its own extinction.
– In the Mouth of Madness
As I mentioned at the start of this essay, I was born with fragile breath: not leaving hospital until halfway through my first year of life due to slow-to-repair lung problems (not to mention slightly later problems, which, it seems, may still lurk within me…) – that fragility possibly the long-silent cause of what haunts me now. It certainly challenged my years as a cathedral chorister; and was followed by the adult-onset asthma detailed above: kicking off in my late twenties, when my son was born. (Just a shame that it has taken something this serious to render it finally controlled.)
Air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body, according to a comprehensive new global review. The research shows head-to-toe harm, from heart and lung disease to diabetes and dementia, and from liver problems and bladder cancer to brittle bones and damaged skin. Fertility, foetuses and children are also affected by toxic air, the review found. The systemic damage is the result of pollutants causing inflammation that then floods through the body and ultrafine particles being carried around the body by the bloodstream. Air pollution is a “public health emergency”, according to the World Health Organization, with more than 90% of the global population enduring toxic outdoor air. New analysis indicates 8.8m early deaths each year – double earlier estimates – making air pollution a bigger killer than tobacco smoking. But the impact of different pollutants on many ailments remains to be established, suggesting well-known heart and lung damage is only “the tip of the iceberg”.
– Damian Carrington: Revealed: air pollution may be damaging ‘every organ in the body (from The Guardian)
There are probably genetic components, too, though, in my case – my maternal grandad dying at an age only a few years removed from mine, now: with a permanent tracheostomy and endless supply of cold-to-the-touch oxygen cylinders at his hospital bedside. How much the soup of environments that I have experienced is stirred through with the seasoning of added pollution is hard to hazard, though. (One thing I am aware of is that pollution may even be responsible for my Asperger’s.)
The British government’s advisory Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutions states that the average reduction in life expectancy of a British citizen caused by unavoidable exposure to unavoidable air pollution “is larger than that of several other established mortality risks”, including road traffic accidents [ouch!] and passive smoking.
– John Rieuwerts: An Air that Kills
Note
Much of the above – pertaining to my immersion in our unclean atmosphere… – can also be said for my consumption of food. So – mainly from painful experience – I am rapidly building a database of ingredients (pollutants?) to avoid. Although, in theory, anything could trigger an attack (as with that complex ‘air’ that I breathe). As much targeted equipment as I own, though, my mechanical defences are not sophisticated enough (nor expensive enough) to help me focus in tightly enough on these likely culprit(s). [Watch this space for a follow-up article.]
Breathe, breathe in the Tysoe air (III)
There was a small blip in NOx readings, as I passed Herbert’s Farm on the penultimate Thursday of July: almost certainly, I noted, emanating from the smouldering of what looked to me like a small compost heap. This continued to gently scent the westerly breeze ruffling the churchyard trees – its odour that of a lazy log-burner – as I thankfully lowered myself onto the bench opposite Peacock Lane (the vista enabling a short extempore jaunt back to times when horses and carts – as well as our calloused feet – would be the principal modes of transport; and such an odour – especially on colder days, of course – would fade into the backcloth of experience: so commonplace would it be). Somewhere, out-of-sight, lawns were also being trimmed in the afternoon’s warmth: bringing a top note of sweetness to the day’s balm.
As the church clock marked the hour, a gentle soundtrack of small children collating the day’s events exploded into one breathless and shimmering stream of concatenated words, punctuated (or arrested) solely by the infrequent slam of car doors. Only rarely was I passed by pedestrians; the most common/constant noise being that of diesel engines rumbling past (embarrassingly so: perhaps wishing they were petrol-fuelled; had not been found out; hoping they would not become the all-too-soon victim of scrappage…). There seemed to be far too few, though. Had the pied piper liberated their peers from their study? Or had I simply selected the wrong day? (Yes! Completely! Although it took a little digging… – even after checking the school and linked county council webpages, I was no wiser. Only much later would I discover that the school had closed a week earlier than their calendars suggested: the date being published in one of the school’s wonderful newsletters!)
No birds lightened the air with voice or flight; and not once did the unnerving ‘silence’ of vehicular electricity rouse me [but then we electric and hybrid drivers (or drivers of ULEVs (ultra low emission vehicles)) – and yes, I can easily drive the length of Tysoe without the ICE (internal combustion engine) cutting in… – sadly form less than 2% of car owners (1.65%, to be exact)]. The wind, however, blew strongly (11 mph, gusting to 17 mph): cantering quickly through the village like some impatient sprite; one, which, having reached the ridge-and-furrow, clears its throat hardily, dispersing all tainted air out into our open fields, and on to the Edge Hills beyond. If there were pollution to be had (and there was, on my return), such aeolian strength was not of a mind to be my Watson!
Or else conclude my words effectual
RS Scorer finished his 1961 talk – The Dawes Memorial Lecture; given to the Association of Public Health Inspectors – by making several recommendations: the second of which stated that, with regards to The Dispersion of Air Pollution (the title of his paper) – as a talking point, or cheval de bataille…
An appreciation of the presence of the problem by the average citizen… is very necessary before real progress can be made. They must be taught to see around them every day the pollution that is omnipresent.
I obviously agree. So, if I have achieved any part of this with my reader, then I am grateful. But we must also take action… – some of which may require small sacrifices. For example:
- driving less, and walking more;
- resisting the urge to light wood or coal fires – unless absolutely necessary… –
- …without turning up the central heating, of course (unless powered by renewables); and
- considering the use of more economical – partly or wholly electrical (and maybe even hydrogen-powered) – vehicles: where absolutely necessary.
As Scorer also states – this time in his penultimate exhortation:
Since great benefit is to be obtained even if only a small locality is made smokeless, voluntary efforts by groups of householders can be very beneficial.
So, next time you think of, say, driving to the pub; or – whether it’s raining or shining – transporting your precious little kiddiwinks to nursery or school the same way (ingraining bad habits deep within their developing minds). And – when you’re considering lighting that old woodburner; or, even worse, that wonderfully decorative open fire – unless it’s your only source of warmth, of course – just throw another jumper on, or cozy up to your pet or partner under a nice fleecy blanket on the settee in front of some box set or other.
All I’m really asking (trying, this time, not to sound like some sort of lifestyle magazine…) is that – occasionally (although I do hope it becomes a habit) – you also consider the state of the air around you: and do your very best not to add to its burden: so that those who are (also) out and about have less chance of developing something noxious through breathing it in. Changing agricultural habits and technology (as well as the minds of those that govern them) may, of course, take longer – even though they are a major contributor to the state of our local atmosphere (especially if you spend time roaming across our local rights-of-way). But we must try: convincing our reluctant and conniving legislators that we need a pile of laws to force those farmers who are also most “reluctant”.
And don’t think that it’s not worth making these relatively small differences simply because no-one else is. First of all, how do you know? And, secondly, leading by example – especially if you can demonstrate how easy and effective your actions are – is one of the greatest ways of implementing change. Then, when you see the school-children and students beginning to include air pollution in their curriculums and Friday strikes and Saturday marches, you can stand that little bit straighter, knowing that you are helping future generations inhabit this wonderful planet in a more equitable way. Take no action, and Gaia will have her revenge: leaving the Earth pristine; but with no sign of humans or their habitations.
As an endnote, I think that it’s a shame that the Neighbourhood Plan we were expecting has been trashed in the face of a desire for “development” – hence its name change… – and that it doesn’t lead the way in such progressive environmentalism – its sparse hints at such “Signifying nothing” (and sometimes much less). A desire for development that is unneeded, and only provided to reap our over-concentration of property magnates large profits, it would seem. It is obvious that its authors care not one jot for the (health of the) land (nor the air or water) around us: simply treating it as some Brobdingnagian Monopoly board on which they can – through whatever financial, planning and property instruments they have to hand (or, as rumour would have it, in their back pockets) – never make a loss. It is also obvious that they care nothing for Tysoe’s other inhabitants: the dirt churned up with planned concrete dust for years on end, as they plug the laughable – ever shrinking; but much needed – “Strategic gap” between Middle and Lower Tysoe – being one of the most perfidious pollutants that can sully the Feldon air.
When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world’s delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;
When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath –
When we are dust, when we are dust! –
Not dead, not undesirous yet,
Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We’ll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,
And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.
And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,
Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that’s I
Shall meet one atom that was you.
– Rupert Brooke: Dust (excerpt)
Postscript
I rose from my seat outside the churchyard at 16:15; walking down Main Street towards home, wondering what I might find… As I did, my Flow moved from ‘good’ to ‘moderate’, and my eyes and throat began to itch….
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