UK Edition
TfL urged to clean up dirty bus routes to save children from 'toxic school run'
London authorities are being urged to tackle the “toxic school run”, as it emerges that children at 455 schools breathe air which breaches legal standards for pollution.
Campaigners are calling for the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to prioritise the clean up around these schools, where raised levels of nitrogen dioxide can leave children struggling to breathe.
TfL, London’s transport body which is chaired by Mr Khan, is being questioned over its decision to put “dirty” diesel and diesel-hybrid buses on routes serving nine in 10 of these schools.
“It's the toxic school run: children are exposed to more than 60 percent of their air pollution intake at school and on their way there, which is why the government needs to tackle that first and prioritise that”, said Alastair Harper, a health campaigner at Unicef UK.
“If it’s 10 years until the air is cleaned up, then there's a whole generation of children forgotten.
“My own daughter was hospitalised due to air pollution. I’ve got skin in this game.”
As part of his bid to reduce air pollution, Mr Khan radically expand the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone, a scheme to charge drivers up to £24 a day to drive in London.
The roll-out costs of the plan have been estimated to reach into the hundreds of millions of pounds. Some say this money could instead be spent on replacing diesel buses near polluted schools with zero-emission vehicles.
Tony Arbour AM, Conservative environment spokesman at City Hall, said: “A shocking 89 percent of schools in the worst polluted hotspots are served by filthy diesel buses despite Sadiq Khan promising he would transform the air we breathe.
“If the Mayor scrapped his ineffective, arbitrary and punitive extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone, he could save an estimated £780m and invest in over 1,800 electric double decker buses. By using these buses in a targeted way, the quality of air being inhaled by thousands of schoolchildren could be radically transformed.”
A spokesman for Mr Khan said: “The Mayor inherited a polluting bus fleet and has taken bold, fast action to clean the thousands of buses on London’s roads.
“A recent study by King’s College London found that without the Mayor’s actions, London’s toxic air would not come into compliance with legal limits for 193 years.
“With Sadiq’s measures, especially the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), this will reduce to six years and every single school in London will meet legal limits by 2025.”