ENVIRONMENT
Environment and Air Pollution
The Alliance of British Drivers (ABD) has been very concerned of late with the misinformation that has been spread by the national media about the impact of air pollution from vehicles on the health of the population. We believe it is not a major health crisis but simply a major health scare fed to a gullible public by journalists wanting a story.
The promotion of such stories has also led to Government over-
The prime objective often appears to be simply the desire to extract money from car drivers and other vehicle users.
The ABD has published a full analysis of the issues that actually gives the truth about the claims made for air pollution, and rebuts many of the allegations. It is entitled “Air Quality and Vehicles: The Truth” and can be downloaded from here:
Please read it. But here’s a summary of the contents:
Is there actually a public health crisis? The simple answer is NO. The evidence does not support such claims.
In reality air quality has been steadily improving and will continue to do so from technical improvements to vehicles. Meanwhile life expectancy has been increasing. There is no public health crisis!
Life expectancy might be improved slightly, for example by a few days if all air pollution was removed. But air pollution does not just come from vehicles but from many other sources of human activity such as heating, industrial processes, farming, building, cooking and domestic wood burners. Only about 50% comes from transport. The air outside is typically cleaner than in people's own homes or in offices and that is where they spend most of the time.
Removing all air pollution would be economically very expensive and leave us with no transport (buses, trains, aeroplanes or cars) and also stop all deliveries of food and other goods. You would not want to live in such a world.
We give all the evidence on our claims above in the aforementioned paper.
But the ABD does accept that air pollution does need to be improved, particularly in certain locations, and we recognise public concern about it. However we argue that measures taken to improve matters should be proportionate and cost effective. There needs to be a proper cost/benefit analysis before imposing restrictions or charges.
There are many measures that can be used to reduce vehicle emissions without restricting motorists or imposing major extra costs on them.
There is certainly no need to panic over air pollution!
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Previous comments we have made on the air quality issue, including detailed analysis of the London ULEZ are given below:
In February 2013 in this Press Release we covered the then Mayor's latest "game-
There was extensive coverage of the proposals for a new Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) covering central London in our Newsletters in July 2016 -
Note that on the 18th December 2017, the Information Commissioner’s Office issued a Decision Notice requiring TfL to disclose the budgets for the ULEZ extension. It can be read here: ICO-
The budget figures subsequently disclosed by TfL, our own estimates of the revenue which are wildly different, and the cost/benefit ratio, are contained in this document: Cost-
The latest financial forecasts on the expansion of the ULEZ to the North/South Circular were given in this blog post in April 2020: ULEZ-
An interesting paper was produced by Neil Oliver on the "Social Costs of Air Pollution from Cars in the UK" in Augist 2017. It can be read here: Social-
Our submission to the public consultation on changes to the LEZ and ULEZ (including expansion of the latter to within the North/South Circular) is present here: ULEZ-
A note on the data on life expectancy published by the ONS in December 2018 which shows that air pollution in London is certainly not a major health crisis and in fact it helps you to live in the most polluted central London boroughs is present here: Life-
As air pollution is a hot topic at present, there are likely to be more articles on the ABD London Blog -