Environmental Targets: Air Pollution

These targets are, again, too little, too late. The Government say they want to improve human health and reduce environmental pollution and that there is some urgency to their actions, but that is absolute nonsense because they have had the opportunity to show the public that they care about the quality of our water and air and they have shown no ambition. A target was published in 2005 to meet WHO’s old air quality guideline which we now won’t meet until 2040 Continue reading “Environmental Targets: Air Pollution” →

Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill passes Report Stage in the House of Lords

The bill will now have its Third Reading this Friday 2nd December before passing to the Commons where Caroline Lucas MP will pick it up. Although it will then go into the bottom of the pile of Commons Private Member’s Bills this is ready to go legislation that could be picked up by the government, it has been painstakingly tailored over a number of years and would put us at the forefront of tackling air pollution. Continue reading “Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill passes Report Stage in the House of Lords” →

No Pollution Plan as heat creates Code Red alert for Eastern England

UK AIR (run by DEFRA) issued a Code Red for air pollution last night covering the East Midlands and Eastern region of England. This is for ozone, which is triggered by a chemical reaction in the air due to the heat,. Atmospheric conditions then trap the polluted air in a heat dome, stopping it from escaping upwards. DEFRA stopped issuing press releases for air pollution alerts in 2011, when the issue hit several front pages.

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Cross Party support as Clean Air Bill has 2nd reading

A Bill calling for Clean Air as a human right has attracted cross party support ahead of its Second Reading on Friday morning (10am, 8 July 2022) in the Lords. The legislation is being called Ella’s law in the hope that it will stop others suffering a similar fate to Ella Roberta Adoo Kissi-Debrah, who died of air pollution when 9 years old and was the first person to have air pollution put as an official cause of death.

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Recycling down – blame Covid

Why are the government hiding the fact that English local authorities now burn far more of your household waste than they recycle? A few weeks ago the government put out pages of statistics on the decline of recycling in 2020 and blamed Covid. Some journalists printed it, most ignored it, none looked at how it fitted a long term trend of recycling flat lining because incineration has increased.

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