How clean is your air?
The days in which the air we breathe is free look to be numbered.
With the Kyoto Protocol likely to take effect with the Russian government's decision Thursday to submit a bill for ratification of the Kyoto treaty, the creation of a market in which greenhouse gas emission credits are traded has become a real possibility.
Pollution from traffic and factories is having an ever greater effect on our health. But as Clare Longrigg reports, it's not as simple as town v country
When Michael Fielding came out of school at 3.30 in the afternoon, his mother Jackie used to walk him straight home along Beckenham High Road. No going out to kick a ball around, no loitering around the shops. By mid-afternoon, the air around their home, between an arterial road leading out of London and the M25, was thick with diesel fumes. When the weather was hot, Michael, who was asthmatic from a young age, would be coughing, needing his inhaler before he got to the front door; once inside, his mother would shut all the windows. About once every two months, his condition got so bad that she would have to take him to hospital.
"It blighted our lives," says Jackie. "We couldn't go out. Beckenham and Bromley are in a basin, and the smog would settle across the area. Diesel is a big trigger to Michael. On a heavily polluted summer day, it would overwhelm him." Although traffic emissions did not cause Michael's asthma, they could bring on attacks. "It definitely got worse after the M25 was opened," says Fielding. "I ran a support group for people with asthma; the M25 affected a lot of people."
Guardian Unlimited
With the Kyoto Protocol likely to take effect with the Russian government's decision Thursday to submit a bill for ratification of the Kyoto treaty, the creation of a market in which greenhouse gas emission credits are traded has become a real possibility.
Pollution from traffic and factories is having an ever greater effect on our health. But as Clare Longrigg reports, it's not as simple as town v country
When Michael Fielding came out of school at 3.30 in the afternoon, his mother Jackie used to walk him straight home along Beckenham High Road. No going out to kick a ball around, no loitering around the shops. By mid-afternoon, the air around their home, between an arterial road leading out of London and the M25, was thick with diesel fumes. When the weather was hot, Michael, who was asthmatic from a young age, would be coughing, needing his inhaler before he got to the front door; once inside, his mother would shut all the windows. About once every two months, his condition got so bad that she would have to take him to hospital.
"It blighted our lives," says Jackie. "We couldn't go out. Beckenham and Bromley are in a basin, and the smog would settle across the area. Diesel is a big trigger to Michael. On a heavily polluted summer day, it would overwhelm him." Although traffic emissions did not cause Michael's asthma, they could bring on attacks. "It definitely got worse after the M25 was opened," says Fielding. "I ran a support group for people with asthma; the M25 affected a lot of people."
Guardian Unlimited
posted by das at 11:01 AM
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