Source: BBC2: The Daily Politics
URL: N/A
Date: 23/10/2017
Event: Anthony Frew on London air pollution: "I really don't think there is a health crisis here"
Credit: BBC2: The Daily Politics
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Jo Coburn: Now, from today drivers using the dirtiest cars will have to pay an extra £10 a day to enter central London. Most of the cars affected will have been bought before 2006 and will now be subject to a £21 charge in the city's congestion area. The policy is aimed at reducing the impact of air pollution, which a study by the Lancet Commission on pollution has linked to up to 50,000 premature deaths across the UK. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan welcomed the measure as one of the ways the city will combat air pollution, and this is what he had to say, this morning.
Sadiq Khan: Look, we have a health crisis in London caused by the poor quality of air - each year in London more than 9,000 Londoners die prematurely because of the poor quality air. We know that there are children in London whose lungs are underdeveloped because of the poor quality, and there are adults who suffer from a variety of conditions, from asthma to dementia and strokes, which is linked to the poor quality, so today's T-charge is the toughest of vehicle emissions surcharge in the world for a very good reason - we need to have the most polluting vehicles off the streets of London.
Jo Coburn: Well, that was Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. Joining us now is Simon Alcock from the environmental legal firm ClientEarth - who last year successfully challenged the government over its failure to meet its air pollution targets - and from Brighton, Professor Anthony Frew, a specialist in respiratory medicine at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. Welcome to both of you, onto the Daily Politics. Anthony Frew, first of all - Sadiq Khan talks about a "health crisis". Would you agree with him?
Anthony Frew: No, I wouldn't. I really don't think there is a health crisis here. There's a long-term problem, which is that we all know air pollution is probably not good for you. It's been difficult to say whether it's all that bad for you, and in particular, this whole issue around the number of deaths that it causes, I think, is misrepresented.
Jo Coburn: In what way is it misrepresented? The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health says that air pollution is causing 50,000 premature deaths per year - is that wrong?
Anthony Frew: Well, it's completely wrong, and anybody who says that - or that there's 10,000 deaths on London - either hasn't read the proper paperwork or is misrepresenting this, for whatever reason. But the issue is that there are - in 2008 the Committee on the Effects of Air Pollution worked out that there was a certain numbers of days lost from the population, as a result of air pollution. And it works out at somewhere between about 20 - 30 days lost off people's lives, on average, But it isn't 40,000 people who die from it, it's a lot of people who lose a little bit of life at the end of their lives. And if you tot that all up, and you do some complex insurance-type maths on it, you can say it's equivalent to 40,000 lives. But it's definitely not 40,000 deaths, and there are no premature deaths that you can measure, as a result of air pollution.
Jo Coburn: Do you agree, Simon Alcock, those figures are wrong, to say that 40,000 people die as a result of air pollution?
Simon Alcock: It's definitely die prematurely. When you die, air pollution isn't on your death certificate. But if you die from a heart condition or a lung condition, air pollution may have had an effect on that. And we also know the effect that it has on children. It affects their lung development, if you grow up in a polluted city, and a polluted town. And we work with a whole range of experts - the World Health Organisation, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, British Lung Foundation, British Health Foundation, Asthma UK. All of those people say air pollution has an impact on your health.
Jo Coburn: Right, an impact on your health - is Anthony Frew right to say that there isn't a direct causal link? As you said, you don't have air pollution put on your death certificate. Just to clarify, that levels of air pollution in London, however bad people might view, do not directly kill - they have an impact on people who are suffering from asthma or breathing difficulties in general, and might shorten their life by a few days.
Simon Alcock: Yes, it's a statistical model, and the same way that they calculate deaths from smoking - it's the same model, I believe, that they use. And this is what the Royal College of Physicians have said. I think it's - we find it better to talk about the impacts on your daily life, for instance we've just had a baby, he's four weeks premature and we're having to go in and out of hospital through one of the most polluted roads in Europe. And that's quite terrifying, as a parent.
Jo Coburn: Right, I mean - Anthony Frew, the point is: you can taste, probably, when you stand in Oxford Circus, a certain level of air pollution. As you say, it's not a good thing, is it, to have, so anything that will combat levels of air pollution in London, or anywhere else, must be advantageous to the health of the nation.
Anthony Frew: Well, you would presume so. There's clearly a lot less pollution in London - I was at school in London in 1970-ish, and the pollution then was considerably worse than it is now. We've seen a 70% decline in nitrogen oxides since 1990, a 50% decline since 2000, and we are actually on track to meet our own self-imposed targets for 2020. So much of this argument is about certain specific areas in the country, particularly London has some problems round some of its major traffic corridors, where we want to take additional action to try to reduce the nitrogen oxide levels. But we don't know for sure -
Jo Coburn: And that would be a good thing -
Anthony Frew: Well, it would be a good thing but the question is: how much benefit are you going to see from it? Because if you're talking about the T-charge, which is today's thing, this is going to target a very small number of vehicles that produce more pollution than others. But actually the nitrogen oxides in London, if you look at London roads, 60% of it comes from traffic, a quarter of that is probably from diesel cars, a quarter is from buses, a quarter from HGVs and there's another quarter that comes in elsewhere. So you're talking about the total, from every car, of about 15%. And if you just take out the small number of really polluting cars, you're still left with a lot of cars that are more efficient but do actually produce in total more nitrogen oxides.
Jo Coburn: Right -
Anthony Frew: So you won't see any tangible change from this T-charge.
Jo Coburn: Right, will you not see any tangible change? I mean, if you're targetting 34,000 vehicles - the figures that have been given to me - out of 2.3 million registered cars in London, is it going to make a big difference?
Simon Alcock: The T-charge is an essential step, if we're going to protect people's health. If that's the only policy we do, it's not enough. But in terms of bringing - as a package of measures that the Mayor's going to do, it's essential. I just want to pick Anthony's point up on 1950s - the 1950s was a different type of pollution - that's when we had factories in the middle of cities, we had all the smogs that we've seen -
Anthony Frew: I said the 1990s - 1990.
Simon Alcock: - if I could just finish my point, we had the Clean Air Act then, that the Conservative government of that time brought in, that cleaned up the air. We need a simliar thing today - the difference now is it's diesel cars that's causing this - diesel vehicles that's causing this pollution. We need the same action again, with those vehicles. It's madness that we're driving vehicles that are harming our health, in this day and age. If the water we were drinking was as dirty as the air that we'd be breathing, we'd be doing something about it.
Jo Coburn: Why are you so reluctant, Anthony Frew, to support measures that, even if they have a fairly small impact, will still be a help, and in combination with other factors or policies brought into play, could actually reduce that number of people dying prematurely, even if it is only by a matter of a few days, from air pollution?
Anthony Frew: Well, firstly it's not the nitrogen oxides that are killing people, it's the particles, which is a slightly different issue. But in relation to this, probably it will make a 1% difference to the total amount of nitrogen oxides in London, because it's - that's the sort of figure you're talking about. It's going to target poor people, people who drive older cars. At the moment, what it's doing is taking the bottom out of the second-hand car market for diesel cars, which means that people who have a post-2006 diesel car are going to find it difficult to sell their car, in due course, and to switch across to hybrids and other things which will be less polluting. So I think as a policy measure, I think it's misguided.
Jo Coburn: Right, I mean, is it misguided? Are there better things that could be done, by the Mayor and other politicians, to solve - or at least sort of mitigate - air pollution levels?
Simon Alcock: It's definitely not misguided, but it is a first step. And I agree with Anthony, we need a range of measures from the government to help people switch to cleaner forms of transport. It isn't people's fault that they're driving diesel vehicles, they shouldn't be penalised - people on low incomes, people with small businesses. We should have a targetted scrappage scheme to help people switch. Other countries are doing it, we should be doing it now, but this is an essential first step, and the Mayor does us credit for bringing it in.
Jo Coburn: Thank you both of you.