It is important that organisations and individuals throughout our country take action to improve the quality of the air that we breathe.
Recently there has been a coroner’s verdict that air pollution made a ‘material contribution’ to the death of Ella Kissi-Debrah. This is a world first. This gives us even more urgency to make changes in our own back yard to help continue to improve the air quality in our own locality.
As part of the Thame Green Living Plan there are lots of references as to why our air quality is affected by how we run our lives and plenty of suggestions to bring about change.
One of the first projects that is needed in relation to improving the quality of the air in Thame is to assess the extent of the problem by establishing metrics for tracking the level of pollution and its potential impact.
The Thame Green Living team are keen to put together a group of people who would like to be involved in this air quality measuring project.
The team will need a core group of people who are passionate about cleaning up the air in our town. The team will need to meet on a regular basis, to decide on the actions that will result in a set of metrics that can be measured over time to continually assess whether changes in behaviour and infrastructure have the desired effect.
The team will be supported by the Thame Green Living team and their contacts who have prior knowledge and experience in this field.
The ongoing results of the monitoring will form part of a build-up of evidence to design actions aimed at reducing carbon emissions from petrol engines and health-damaging nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter from diesels.
There are plenty of possible actions and these could be taken on by one or more individuals or groups including surveys of traffic flows/ congestion/ engine idling, creating documentation, guides, leaflets, reviewing and modelling the results of actions, plan and organise events.
If you or a group that you are connected to might be interested in getting involved please do contact the Thame Green Living team through the contact form on the Thame Green Living website.
RECOMMENDED READING
The Thame Green Living Plan is a brilliantly designed booklet of issues and activities that could be actions in order to improve the environment in which we live.
The plan is quite long and covers every area that makes up out environment.
Here are a short list of pages relating specifically to the Air Quality in Thame.
- Page 8 – The effect of fossil fuel use generally
- Page 9 – How petrol engines affect our carbon and upper atmosphere
- Page 11 – Street level pollution and the effect of air quality
- Pages 12/14 – Notes on Thame Town Centre travel and traffic
- Page 38 – Building awareness, understanding and support for individual actions
- Pages 40-42 – Building a supported movement for change in air quality.
