Our Love Lambeth Air project is now into its third month of monitoring, halfway through our six-month project. Love Lambeth Air provides local people with the materials and support required to collect measurements for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) across a number of sites in Lambeth, providing a detailed picture of air quality in their local area. Find out more.
We have received the first set of results back from the lab and the results can be seen on the Community Air Quality map. On the map you can find the site locations across Lambeth along with data for each site including the level of nitrogen dioxide.
The site with the highest reading (104 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m³) monthly mean) can be found on a busy road under a railway bridge in Waterloo. A variety of vehicles use this road including buses as there is a bus stop just under the bridge. The lack of air circulation under the bridge could contribute to this high result. Other nearby results in Waterloo are also high, if the monthly means were the annual means they would be well above EU limits.
In Brixton the air quality has been in the press recently as Brixton Road breached the NO2 hourly legal limit for 2017 in five days. By law, hourly levels of NO2 must not be more than 200 μg/m3 more than 18 times in an entire year, however, on 5th January this limit was broken on Brixton Road.
Many of the sites we are monitoring in and around Brixton had monthly means above EU limits of 40 μg/m³.
Across Lambeth the sites on main routes and through-routes have relatively high levels of NO2. This could be due to traffic or perhaps vehicle idling. Idling Action are campaigning to help reduce local air pollution caused by motorists leaving their engines running while stationary.
If you would like to find out more, have any queries or would like to be added to our project mailing list please email the team at: lovelambethair@mappingforchange.org.uk.
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