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SUMMARY:Extracting policy relevant findings from air pollution monitoring 
 networks - Dr Gary Fuller\, King's College London
DTSTART:20160125T141500Z
DTEND:20160125T151500Z
UID:TALK63781@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Olalekan Popoola
DESCRIPTION:European\, national\, city and local governments are all worki
 ng to decrease the UK’s air pollution health burden but which policy is 
 working best? \nWith the threat of European Court action\, UK policy maker
 s are becoming increasingly attuned to the effectiveness of policies to im
 prove urban air pollution. Concentrations of NO2 are between two and three
  times EU Limit Values alongside some London roads\, largely due to the di
 sparity between real-world nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel vehicles a
 nd those expected from the regulatory test results. There is also surprisi
 ngly little evidence on the real-world effectiveness of diesel particle tr
 aps.\n\nThe sheer number of policies makes it hard to evaluate their indiv
 idual effectiveness. Instead our study searched for the locations that hav
 e experienced the greatest changes in air pollution since 2010 with a view
  to determining the most effective policy packages. Trends were examined a
 t 65 London roadside monitoring sites.  Air pollution continues to deterio
 rate alongside some roads but most showed improvements since 2010. Clear s
 ituations were found where the retro-fitting of SCR systems to buses lead 
 to improvements in NO2. Although improvements in PM2.5 concentrations were
  consistent with decreases in black carbon\, many locations in outer Londo
 n did not see improvements in PM10 and traffic emissions of CO2 did not ma
 tch the downward expectation from improved fleet efficiencies.\n\nIt is al
 so unclear which part of the urban airborne particle mixture is responsibl
 e for the health effects seen in epidemiological studies. This means that 
 policies to reduce the PM10 or PM2.5 concentration to meet legal limits mi
 ght not be the optimum to decrease health impacts. From the air quality sc
 ience perspective it would be tempting to simply measure as many candidate
  metrics as possible and test these in health studies but this raises meth
 odological questions for epidemiologists. Is this the right question to as
 k? A recent study at King's has proposed a novel way to address this probl
 em by considering the pollution mixtures that we are exposed to rather tha
 n the individual pollutants themselves. In the first application of this t
 echnique respiratory deaths in London were found to be associated with mix
 tures that were dominated by secondary particles and this opens up new opp
 ortunities for health impact analysis.\n
LOCATION:Unilever Lecture Theatre\, Department of Chemistry
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