Throughout the day the team at King’s have been working with Public Health England to monitor the impacts of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire near Notting Hill in west London. We have been examining data from the LondonAir sites to determine whether smoke reached ground level in the area predicted by Public Health England.

Smoke from large fires can lead to peaks of particle pollution downwind although these are mainly short lived. Previous examples include a warehouse fire on the site of what is now the Olympic Park in 2007 and the fires during the 2011 riots.

Today wind took the smoke from the Grenfell Tower fire towards the north west. We did not detect any smoke from the fire at the North Kensington research site which is less than 1 km north of the fire. Two small peaks in particle concentrations were measured across Brent (Harlesden and close to the North Circular) between 7 and 7:30 this morning. These were consistent with pollution from fires but concentrations were less than 80 ug m-3 and lasted for less than an hour. The exposure to the smoke from the fire would have been much less than the EU Limit Value for PM10 particle pollution which is 50 ug m-3 for 24 hours. Photographs of the fire show the plume rising rapidly upwards from the tower block which is likely to have reduced the impact of smoke at ground level.

King’s and Public Health England will continue to monitor the situation over the coming hours. We are grateful to the local authorities that support the LondonAir network enabling us to provide this information. Anyone concerned about travelling to the area close to the fire should check for updates from London Fire Brigade.

For more public health information on this please see the health advice.

Item date 14/06/2017