The official Welsh (WG) classification
of Air Pollution levels (link) is inherited from the old Department of Health (DoH), based on COMEAP 'experts' who've changed their minds below). It’s still posted up for use, despite new Welsh policy issued in 2017. This
included statutory guidance to Local
Authorities on giving special consideration to the long-term risks posed to
babies and children via exposure to air pollution. The old DoH/WG classification
doesn’t. This daily air quality index (DAQI) is also based on quite outdated
standards for adults.
The World Health Organisation produced
guidance in 2012/13, including identifying PM2.5 as a human carcinogen, but the
WG took no notice until the Minister’s statement of June 2017. Revised WHO Air
quality guidelines are due out in 2020.
The WHO annual mean concentration guideline
for particulate matter stipulates that PM2.5 not exceed 10 μg/m3
annual mean and 25 μg/m3 24-hour mean; also that PM10 not exceed 20
μg/m3 annual mean, or 50 μg/m3 daily mean ( 24-hour). PM2.5 is most closely related to ill-health
impacts (see below).
The
DoH/Welsh classification clings to the pre-WHO numbers, calling PM2.5 values below 35 “low” (40% higher than the WHO limit) and
below 53 “moderate” (double the WHO limit). It’s highly remiss of the Environment
Minister that she has failed to withdraw this completely misleading classification
and issue a new one for guidance of the people of Wales.
Vale of Glamorgan monitoring of the Barry 'Biomass' Incinerator
The Council has purchased two monitors that measure PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 every 15 minutes. The averages for each hour are now posted daily. We presume the numbers are accurate as the monitors have been working for two years. However, users should ignore the low/moderate/high classification and colouring, which are the old defective WG/DoH ones above.
Outdoor air pollution is a major
environmental health problem affecting everyone in low-, middle-, and
high-income countries.
Ambient
(outdoor) air pollution in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause
4.2 million premature deaths worldwide per year in 2016; this mortality is due
to exposure to small particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), which cause cardiovascular and
respiratory disease, and cancers.
People
living in low- and middle-income countries disproportionately experience the
burden of outdoor air pollution with 91% (of the 4.2 million premature deaths)
occurring in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest burden in the
WHO South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions. The latest burden estimates
reflect the very significant role air pollution plays in cardiovascular illness
and death. More and more, evidence demonstrating the linkages between ambient
air pollution and the cardiovascular disease risk is becoming available,
including studies from highly polluted areas.
WHO
estimates that in 2016, some 58% of outdoor air pollution-related premature
deaths were due to ischaemic heart disease and strokes, while 18% of deaths
were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute lower respiratory
infections respectively, and 6% of deaths were due to lung cancer.
Some
deaths may be attributed to more than one risk factor at the same time. For
example, both smoking and ambient air pollution affect lung cancer. Some lung
cancer deaths could have been averted by improving ambient air quality, or by
reducing tobacco smoking.
A
2013 assessment by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
concluded that outdoor air pollution is carcinogenic to humans, with the
particulate matter component of air pollution most closely associated with
increased cancer incidence, especially lung cancer. An association also has
been observed between outdoor air pollution and increase in cancer of the
urinary tract/bladder.
Origin of the Air Quality index and Banding
COMEAP first
introduced the UK’s Air Quality index in 1998 (Committee on Medical Effects of
Air Pollutants: Statement on Banding of Air Quality, 1998. Link).
Their subsequent
2011 Review of the UK Air Quality Index
(Daily AQI or DAQI) was introduced by Defra and devolved administrations from 1
Jan.2012. It was COMEAP’s final
publication before being disbanded and the last effort of British medical pollution
‘experts’ to maintain that only sensitive people need worry about air pollution
(even said as “exquisitely sensitive” in Prof. Harrison’s evidence for an
incinerator company – Portsmouth Incinerator Inquiry, 2000**). British medical policy leaders in COMEAP,
including Prof Harrison, were compromised in favour of incinerators at that
time. Evidence on permanent harm to child-lung development was accumulating,
measured as lung function, US/Calif authorities were recommending against children
exercising outdoors during high ozone episodes, and European experts were
developing the WHO guidance. Prof Stephen
Holgate chaired the COMEAP Review, which is thick with material on asthma,
Holgate’s speciality. They devised the
irresponsible advice that only children with ‘lung problems’ should ‘consider’ ‘reducing’
‘strenuous’ exercise at times of moderate or high pollution. The report says
they were motivated by inter alia
- the need to avoid an exaggerated level of worry and concern
- our view that children with no known respiratory disease were unlikely to be particularly susceptible to the effects of air pollution.
Nowadays, however, Stephen Holgate talks of pollution
worsening
asthma and COPD and even emphasises
the need to reduce NO2 as a cause of new-onset child asthma.
Prof Harrison likewise changed his view,
but their COMEAP report lives on the DAQI. Even though Welsh government policy is
reduction of NO2, their Health Boards play it down and their NRW permits
increases in NO2 up to the old limits.
** Unpublished
Evidence, via Public Interest Consultants, 2000
