Visit our interactive community map to share ‘pollution hotspots’ and see where monitors have been placed.
Project Overview
The London Borough of Redbridge has launched a new project to improve the air quality in the borough and raise awareness about the issue of air pollution. Key dates and project progress will be available on the Redbridge Council website.
Air pollution is harmful to our health, but it is especially so for younger children and older people. Every year, 9,400 people die early in London because of poor air quality – with people living in poorer areas being even more at risk.
‘We Care for Our Air‘ is a project which aims to monitor and increase awareness of local air quality. It is focused on three areas within the borough, Loxford, Newbury Park and Goodmayes. These areas have been identified as having some of the highest rates of illness associated with air pollution.
We Care for Our Air will run from March 2023 to March 2025 with ongoing evaluation to assess changes in local air quality, air quality awareness, residents’ behaviour, and health outcomes.
Community Action
With no prior experience, local residents have been monitoring nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) in the spaces near to their homes and around their neighbourhood. We provided all the equipment and training required and will analyse and share the results every month. There will be further opportunities to get involved throughout the project, including cycle training and raising awareness.
Watch this short video to see how our volunteers set up their monitors at home:
In parallel, we will be working with local primary schools to engage the pupils in awareness raising workshops and air pollution monitoring, as well as providing cycle training to encourage active travel.
The Results
The gathered data will inform the development of targeted strategies and campaigns that will enable residents, particularly vulnerable groups such as school-aged children, to make behaviour changes that reduce their exposure to harmful air pollution.
We will produce an interactive community map to visualise the project data. The map will identify areas with higher levels of air pollution, enabling residents and visitors to make informed choices about outdoor activities and travel routes to minimise their exposure to harmful pollution.
Partners
This is a London Borough of Redbridge project funded by DEFRA. Mapping for Change is a key delivery partner alongside PWLC Projects and Whistlejacket London.
Related Projects
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The City of London Corporation and Mapping for Change are teaming up once again to conduct a citizen science project to monitor air quality in the capital city and evaluate the recent changes made in the area. The project will seek to understand the impacts that public participation and citizen science have on environmental issues.
D-NOSES - Tackling Odour Pollution Across Europe
D-NOSES is a three-year EU funded research project which aims to provide a solution to the largely neglected issue of odour pollution, changing the traditional top-down approach for a bottom-up one. The lack of regulation from authorities around odour pollution is mainly due to it being difficult to reliably measure and the potential solutions being costly to implement.
Breathe Clean - Citizen Science in Tower Hamlets
Breathe Clean will be providing Tower Hamlets residents with the materials & training needed to monitor nitrogen dioxide levels around the places that matter to them. Participants will measure the air quality at a number of locations over a period of six months, to get a more granular picture of the situation in the borough. The data from the Breathe Clean project will be made available on Mapping for Change’s community maps webpage.