Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Air pollution: kids exposed to higher pollution if driven to school
London's air pollution crisis is finally starting to get more attention, and this Guardian article particularly focusses on the impacts on children & schools - and also has this possibly counter-intuitive fact:
'“The public health message is, you can’t hide from air pollution inside a car,” says Ben Barratt, an air quality expert at King’s College London (KCL). “We advise the public to leave the car at home whenever possible. This exposes you and your family to lower levels of air pollution, you’re not contributing to the problem, and you’re also getting the benefits of exercise. That’s tackling three of our biggest public health challenges in one go: air quality, climate change and obesity."'
This is also quite striking:
"At a school in Cheltenham, where many children are picked up by car, Mounsor recently measured a tripling in NO2 levels during the school run."
There's quite a substantial school run traffic in this area, though probably quite a bit less than in Cheltenham. We, however, have plenty of traffic & traffic-promoting developing (like the Arena shopping centre).
We need a strong council commitment to lower traffic volumes, measures to reduce pollution from individual vehicles - and more campaigns in favour of walking, cycling & public transport.
We also need to make sure that Boris's insane plans, announced this week, for 2 new traffic tunnels across central London, don't happy. Imagine the increase in traffic volumes & pollution in East & West London that will result.....
Tags for Forum Posts: Transport, air pollution, cars, schools
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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Well speaking as someone who wasn't offered a school place at the school four blocks away but was instead sent 2 miles up the road to Tottenham I don't feel I had any choice. Now I have a school place that it's possible to walk to, I do.
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Recycling info I've just posted on another thread, most children going to school locally live within easy walking diastance of their school http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/distance_of_la...
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This list only gives those primary schools which are popular enough to have 'the oversubscription criteria.. used', e.g. distance restriction on admission (which is a lot of schools, but by no means all of them). The full list of primary schools in Haringey is here.
If you are not able to get in to those schools closest to you because of these short distances, you'll end up in a less popular school without a distance restriction & this could be some way away from where you live. Some people may choose to drive in this situation, others will have longer walks, cycles or bus rides.
One other factor is people moving further away from a school in later years - though I think Haringey have just changed the rules on sibling entry to prevent siblings getting automatic entry in these circumstances.
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