Call it the Air Wars. For the past 18 months, the city of London has
failed to meet air-quality limits set by the European Commission . Earlier
this month, Brussels granted the U.K. capital a temporary extension to bring
levels of a certain type of dangerous pollutant called PM10 to within a
safe standard. But facing a $480 million fine should the city fail to comply,
London’s mayor has launched a novel challenge to the EC, saying that London’s pollution is actually the result of bad air
drifting over from other European countries.
In 2008, the EC adopted a directive that set ambient air-quality limits for
a variety of pollutants, including PM10 — that is, particles above 10 micrometers
in diameter. Such particles, which are emitted by industry, traffic and
domestic heating, cause 4,300 premature deaths in London each year, mostly
in elderly and asthmatic citizens, according to a report last year by the
mayor’s office. Under the EC directive, cities are allowed to exceed the
limit for PM10 up to 35 times each year; London has consistently surpassed
that number.
On March 11, the British government — which will be held accountable if London
fails to meet the targets — was granted a three-month extension before the
EC holds infringement proceedings, which could carry a hefty fine. Privately, however, city officials say they will struggle to make the new deadline. Last
week, London mayor Boris Johnson said tests at various
pollution hotspots around the city had revealed that 80% of instances in
which London exceeded the PM10 limit was the result of pollution drifting
over the channel from the Continent.
Isabel Dedring, the mayor’s Advisor for Environment, says that
independent researchers from Kings College London have determined that
pollution from road transport and agriculture fertilizers from Western
Europe, as well as power stations in central and eastern Europe, had led to spikes
in PM10 in London. She says that eleven European countries are in violation
of the European National Emissions Ceiling Directive — which limits air
pollution on a country-wide basis — and that this was contributing to
London’s air-quality problems. “It is of course right to hold London to account to protect the health of
Londoners,” says Dedring. “At the same time, when you have waves of pollution coming in
from other countries … there’s nothing London can do about that directly.” She adds that the U.K. will appeal to the EC, and
may even consider a legal challenge.
Europe has some of the most stringent air-pollution limits in the world.
European cities must not exceed a daily concentration value for PM10 of 50
micrograms per cubic meter; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, by
comparison, sets the limit at 150 micrograms per cubic meter.
When contacted by TIME, the European Commission seemed unimpressed that
London is blaming its air pollution problem on bad air from Europe. Joe Hennon,
European Commission Spokesman for the Environment, grants that “air
pollution knows no borders and it may well be that air pollution from
continental Europe is transported to the U.K. during particular meteorological
episodes.” But he says those episodes are rare, as the dominant southwesterly
winds in the U.K. usually move the air pollution in the opposite direction — toward
Europe.
Hennon adds that, in those instances of “inverse wind circulation” when
European air pollution spreads to the U.K., the long distance traveled means
that the pollution levels are “very much diluted in comparison
to the regionally and locally emitted air pollutants.” Most of the time particles are transported from Europe during rainy,
“cyclonic” weather systems “that efficiently scavenge air pollution,” he says. And,
when the weather is not rainy, particles usually stay lofted in the air and do not reach street level.
Simon Birkett, the director of the pressure group Clean Air in London, says
that even if it were true that European pollution has reached London’s
streets, the EC directive allows for such transboundary air pollution by granting
35 air-quality infringements a year. “It is laughable for the Mayor to suggest others are to blame for London’s
air pollution problems,” Birkett writes in an email to TIME. “We need Mayor Johnson and the government to
tackle an invisible public-health crisis with as many early deaths
attributable to air pollution in London in 2008 as we thought occurred
during the Great Smog of 1952,” when cold, windless conditions led to a blanket of smog enveloping London, leading to an estimated 4,000 premature deaths.
Birkett blames London’s high pollution on Johnson’s decision to delay by 15
months the tightening of London’s Low Emission Zone, which fines the most
polluting vans and trucks, and also his decision to abandon plans by his
predecessor to extend the “congestion charge” zone in London, which charges
drivers who enter central London. But Dedring, the mayor’s environment adviser, insists that the city has
undertaken various measures to combat pollution, including the
introduction of dust suppressant spray, a sticky solution applied several times a week to roads that keeps particulate matter on the ground and prevents it from re-circulating in the air. “We are taking a very innovative
approach to this problem, but to a certain extend we are stymied,” she says.
See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.
See the Cartoons of the Week.
