The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, visited the College yesterday to learn about the Environmental Research Group's (ERG) work analysing air pollution. The visit, on World Asthma Day, comes ahead of the summertime smog season in London.

The Minister met with experts including Air Quality Monitoring manager Gary Fuller who discussed the current level of air pollution, explained air quality measurements from data stations and data analysis. He also discussed air quality forecasting alerts - airAlert - which was first launched in 2006.

Air pollution service

Gary Fuller explains, ‘The service sends free messages direct to vulnerable people informing them about air pollution levels in their area. The service warns people the day before or on the day that elevated air pollution is expected to occur. Users receive a message to home phones via voice message, to mobile phones via text and via direct email.’

For more information see: airAlert website

This week the Sussex Air Quality Partnership launches its latest website Sussex-Air website designed by the ERG which includes a section on air quality. It also caters for more specialist users such as local authority staff by providing advanced graphing and statistical tools where real-time monitoring data can be measured against government air quality objectives.

Nigel Jenkins, Project Development Officer for Sussex-air comments:'King’s have provided an excellent resource for the partnership. It enables people to access data and information with ease and we hope it will be useful for public as well as environmental professionals. This links strongly with our airAlert service, to provide respiratory vulnerable people and health professionals with near real-time information.'

Assembly Environment Committee evidence

Earlier this month a report from the Assembly Environment Committee into Air Quality found that air pollution in London may contribute to the deaths of an estimated 3,000 people per year. The report included evidence and extensive reference to data provided by the Environmental Research Group and its Director, Frank Kelly, Professor of Environmental Health, at King’s.

Professor Kelly gave evidence to the Committee in February and explained that while air pollution does not kill people directly, it works alongside other entities (such as viruses, bacteria and allergens) to accelerate and exacerbate health problems. This can lead to hospitalisation, and even death in the more severe cases.

Professor Kelly said that children and older people are the most vulnerable to air pollution. Scientific studies have shown those who live on busy roads, or children who go to school close to busy roads are more likely to have respiratory illnesses

The Assembly Environment Committee report says London’s air quality - amongst the worst in the UK and Europe and well below targets set by the European Union - is having a severe and costly impact on the National Health Service. The full report is available on the London Assembly website: London website

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Item date 07/05/2009