My day as a black carbon monitor
With Clean Air Day coming up on 20 June 2019, the public health and sustainability teams were looking to publicise the issues around air quality, which is rapidly rising in awareness levels.
We know that there are patient groups particularly vulnerable to air pollution, including those with respiratory illnesses, Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), pregnant women, children and older people. WHO estimate that in 2016, that worldwide, some 58% of outdoor air pollution-related premature deaths were due to ischaemic heart disease and strokes, 18% of deaths were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and acute lower respiratory infections, and 6% of deaths were due to lung cancer.[1]
Of course smoking tobacco exacerbates these harms when present. While these are generally long term conditions, there are short term impacts as well, for example on children with asthma or adults with CHD which include shortness of breath or a dry throat.
We were discussing this issue with Professor Jonathan Grigg, Professor of Paediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine at QMUL, who has authored reports on the long term impact of air pollution for the RSP[2] and is an expert on the effects of asthma on children. He had the idea that I could use a Black Carbon Monitor for a day to see the impact. Black Carbon is the sooty material emitted from gas and diesel engines, coal-fired power plants, and other sources that burn fossil fuel. It comprises a significant portion of particulate matter or PM, which is an air pollutant, and is also a major contributor to global warming.[3]
So not good.
Dr Abigail Whitehouse at the Blizzard Institute fitted me out with a monitor, called a Microaeth. She told me that this is “a small hand held and pocket sized monitor that measures Black Carbon. It does this by sucking in air through tubing attached to your jacket and passing this over a filter which then measures how much black carbon there is in the air every minute. We then put this data in to a graph and can see where peaks occur and what background level there is.” It is generally used to assess harms for patients at particular risk.
My Microaeth was labelled 5 Cheesecake. No me neither, but here is a picture to prove it.
Anyway I kept the monitor on and kept a diary during the day and during my bike journey home. The next day Abigail kindly analysed the results.
The first peak was as I tackled a BMW driver idling his engine opposite our offices in Ashfield Street. He responded quite well and turned off his engine on request. Then there are a few random peaks, possibly connected to the nozzle falling off in my suit pocket. More peaks as I popped over Whitechapel Road for a falafel wrap (and another successful anti-idling intervention at the front of the Royal London). Then low background levels until my journey home. A big peak here as I got my bike ready on the road and then another peak travelling through some horrible congestion on Vallance Road. Drops right down as I travelled through a park and quiet streets to where I live. Another set of peaks when I popped to the shops later that evening before low background levels back home.
What this tells me is how significant close proximity to a pollutant is to these levels. Whilst that is dismaying, and very poignant to remember that in relation to car exhaust fumes a young child is at the right (that is, wrong) height to breathe in this pollution, there is a positive in that harm can be reduced quite quickly by eliminating the source of pollution. My anti-idling interventions were stimulated by wearing the monitor and wanting to see if they were reflected in the report (they were) but this is something we can all do, switching off engines where you can if you drive and having a word as concerned citizens. There will be anti-idling campaigns at the Royal London on Clean Air Day and at Whipps Cross on 18 June. This does make a difference.
You can also think about avoiding the most traffic-ridden roads if you can, and use active or public transport rather than drive where possible.
However this needs more than individual effort. CNN reported in April that for the first time ever, electric cars outsold gas and diesel vehicles in Norway. It stated that “Norway has implemented a number of incentives to encourage people to buy electric cars... Zero-emission cars don't pay the 25% Value Added Tax (VAT) and are exempt from Norway's carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and weight taxes imposed on gas and diesel vehicles. They also get discounts on parking, toll roads and ferries.” [4]
Norwegians may be nice people, but clearly they have incentives and infrastructure to support this change and we should be doing more for example with more charging points. We also need the industry to manufacture appropriate vehicles. I gather these are not available for our patient transport fleet for example, despite a strong push for these from the estates and facilities team.
I can’t help feeling that one day we will look back on how we allowed polluting vehicles onto our streets in the same way as we think about how Victorians allowed children to be stuffed up chimneys as handy sized sweeps.
In the meantime, many thanks to Jonathan and Abigail for this insight into black carbon. We are developing a clean air hospital framework hopefully on all the main sites, so let me know if you would like to support - and please look out for the Clean Air Day stalls.
Andrew Attfield, associate director for public health
Resources
[1] https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health
[2] https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/every-breath-we-take-lifelong-impact-air-pollution
[3] https://www.epa.gov/air-research/black-carbon-research
[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/04/world/norway-zero-emission-vehicles-trnd/index.html