The Great Smog lingers in S Bush

Shepherd's Bush: keeping traditions alive

We live in one of the most polluted corners of the capital, exceeding all targets for safe air by considerable margins. That's the conclusion of a monitoring station situated on Shepherd's Bush roundabout, which you have to know is even there in order to see. It's a  chest height grey box with a little fan on top near the post office and is part of a London wide network run by a pollution measuring project co-ordinated by King's College London. The news comes days after the 60th anniversary of the Great Smog, and shows that in our part of the city that tradition is being kept alive. Even if it ensures many people who live here are not.

Here's our report card:

Not great, is it.

What these figures mean is that we are regularly breathing in dangerous levels of pollutants that can cause fatalities among people with respiratory conditions or who are just more vulnerable because their bodies can't process the dirt as well, such as the elderly.

We last came across this subject durng the mud slinging of the Mayoral election campaign, when Ken Kivingstone pointed out that Boris Johnson cared not a bit about the issue. Instead of acting to bring the pollutants down, even on pain of an EU fine, our Mayor of Toytown has opted to go for the sticking plaster option instead, with trucks laying down a form of glue on the roads to stop those polluted particles floating into those pesky monitoring stations and so giving him bad marks.

Boris Johnson's pollution score card

Well now it seems even the sticking plaster isn't working, and the Mayor has been given a big red cross. In his campaign to be the next Prime Minister this is unlikely to worry him too much, so you have to hope that those in the London Assembly will be on his case about it in the years to come.

Cough.