The Environmental Research Group and the Department of Geography at King’s are leading partners in a consortium of universities in a £2.8 million research project on traffic and health issues in London.
‘ClearfLo’ (Clean air for London) aims to increase understanding of the distribution, transport and transformation of potentially hazardous air pollutants in urban areas. and will establish the infrastructure needed to monitor air pollutants moving in and out of London, paving the way for better air quality and health studies in the future.
Air pollution is a major environmental risk to health and is estimated by the World Health Organisation to cause approximately two million premature deaths worldwide per year. King’s experts recently warned that pollution could reduce the lifespan of some Londoners by up to ten years.
Understanding how pollutants relevant to human health are dispersed in the urban environment is a challenge, as traditional methods to measure dispersion are not applicable in all urban environments. As a result, the distribution and concentration of some pollutants in urban areas, such as particles, are not well characterised or mapped, and there is potential for exposure misclassification in epidemiology studies and studies of risk.
Extensive data collection
ClearfLo will address this lack of understanding by creating four ‘super’ air quality monitoring sites from Harwell to the west of London and from Detling to the east of London. In addition to the extensive data that will be collected from these sites for the next three years meteorological and air quality monitors will be placed at the top of the BT Tower. Also a number of short but extensive monitoring campaigns will be undertaken in central London using equipment brought in by the consortium partner universities.
Frank Kelly, Director of the Environmental Research Group, and Deputy Director of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment & Health says: ‘ClearfLo is an important new NERC [Natural Environment Research Council] initiative funded under their Environment and Health Program. Situated in London which has the UK’s largest air quality problems, results arising from ClearfLo will help underpin future studies examining the precise link between air quality and health.’
ClearfLo is a further sign that the impact of the environment on human health is being taken much more seriously. The Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) recently established a new Environment & Health Research Centre between King’s College London and Imperial College, acknowledging King’s as one of the foremost places in the country for environmental health research.
Item date 23/02/2010
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