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London vs Europe in row over cycling on high-pollution days

Environment Commissioner says Londoners riding to work may be doing more harm than good to themselves

A row has broken out between European environmental authorities and the Mayor of London over the risk of staying active when London suffers days of high atmospheric pollution.

Europe’s Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik told the Evening Standard’s Nicholas Cecil that Londoners riding bikes to work on high pollution days could be doing themselves more harm than good.

He advised that people should be wary of jogging when the air quality is very poor and implicitly added to criticism of the Mayor and Government for not doing enough to publicise the hazards of high pollution.

He said: “It is wrong that people should be anything other than fully aware and informed when pollutant levels are high.

“Medical advice suggests that people should not exert themselves physically during episodes of high pollution  - when that jog in the park or cycle to work could be doing considerably more harm than good.”

Potocnik said people should use websites and apps that provide updates on air quality.

The Mayor’s office dismissed Potocnik concerns.

“The sensible advice given to healthy Londoners by medical professionals is to continue their normal daily activity,” said a spokeswoman for the Mayor.

“Recent research from Barcelona published in the British Medical Journal suggests the health benefits of cycling on normal healthy people greatly outweigh the health risk of air pollution 77 fold.”

Dr Paul Cosford, director for health protection at Public Health England agrees. During the pollution peak in the first couple of days of this month he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “For normal healthy people, I am on my bike today and other people should be. We don’t need to buy little white masks, we need to increase the amount of physical activity that we do because it’s great for our health.”

However, he did warn that those who felt the effects of the poor air qulity should take it easy. He said: “We may notice sore eyes coughs, or throat and maybe a little bit of a wheeze if we’re taking physical activity outdoors and if that occurs it’s sensible to reduce, during these high pollution episodes, the amount of physical activity.”

The UK is  facing fines of up to £300 million per year from the European Commission for its failure to rein in emissions of nitrogen dioxide from diesels.

Governments were supposed to have reduced air pollution to “safe levels” by 2010. A five-year extension was granted to countries with problem areas, as long as they had “a credible and workable plan for meeting air-quality standards within five years of the original deadline” but Britain looks unlikely to hit the target in 2015.

Many of the pollution hotspots causing concern to the European Commission are in London. In one of the ‘dead cat’ debating tactics for which he is famous, London Mayor Boris Johnson has claimed European vehicle emissions standards can be “diddled” by manufacturers.

That, he said, made the threat of a fine “doubly absurd”.

Potocnik responded that Johnson had “romanticised the dust of London” when he implied the pollution in early April was largely caused by sand blown in from the Sahara. Many commentators pointed out how remarkable it was that the sand had managed to increase pollution along London’s major roads.

Potocnik said the criticism of Brussels was “intellectual sleight of hand” and that member states had “hampered” Commission moves for cleaner engines in a short timeframe.

The Mayor’s office claimed London had “the most ambitious and comprehensive package of measures to tackle pollution”.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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22 comments

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kie7077 | 9 years ago
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For anyone interested:
Defra UK Pollution Forecast

London Detailed Pollution 'Nowcast'

PS, links don't always work from the subscription email, you may need to visit the article page comments.

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arfa | 9 years ago
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I continued to cycle through it too. However, the Saharan dust only highlighted the issue as it was more visible. There was a worse episode of pollution two weeks earlier. What was telling for me was that several colleagues (who were not exerting themselves) were complaining about hayfever/asthmatic type symptoms which had not presented before.
Urban pollution is a serious issue that we bury at the altar of the automobile.

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jmaccelari | 9 years ago
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I cycled through the whole event and never noticed a thing, except for a layer of Mr Cameron's 'Sahara' sand on the car parked outside.

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Colin Peyresourde | 9 years ago
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Ignoring dead cats: I recently had my first ever asthma attack as a result of the London pollution. I went for a run and developed a cough. It was only the next day that they talked about the air pollution associated with the blood rain. I then travelled to France and my cough got worse and eventually went to bed wheezing and breathing shallowly. If I hadn't had a doctor diagnose me with asthma a few years ago I don't think I would have known what was wrong. Apparently asthma can strike when the air quality gets better too....which explains the event. I still feel a little tight chested at the moment when I run, though I completed a 40 mile ride the other week since coming back with no issues.

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freespirit1 | 9 years ago
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If my local train company ran trains earlier on a Sunday I would never have to drive or ride my motorcycle in London.

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kie7077 | 9 years ago
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Dr Paul Cosford, director for health protection at Public Health England agrees. During the pollution peak in the first couple of days of this month he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “For normal healthy people, I am on my bike today and other people should be. We don’t need to buy little white masks, we need to increase the amount of physical activity that we do because it’s great for our health.”

However, he did warn that those who felt the effects of the poor air qulity should take it easy. He said: “We may notice sore eyes coughs, or throat and maybe a little bit of a wheeze if we’re taking physical activity outdoors and if that occurs it’s sensible to reduce, during these high pollution episodes, the amount of physical activity.”

Make your mind up doctor.

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arfa | 9 years ago
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Plenty of independent evidence is available, eg here

http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/nowcast.asp

Funny how pollution is always worst along the roads isn't it ?
We really have to move the debate on and there needs to be genuine social stigma attached to unnecessary car use in areas of concentrated population. My personal problem is city types commuting into central London in range rovers.... just wrong on so many levels

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FluffyKittenofT... replied to arfa | 9 years ago
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arfa wrote:

My personal problem is city types commuting into central London in range rovers.... just wrong on so many levels

Perhaps if I agreed to never go racing round the New Forest or parts of Surrey on a bike, all those home-counties commuters (and faux-country set second-homers) would agree in return to never drive in my city?

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arfa replied to FluffyKittenofTindalos | 9 years ago
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FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
arfa wrote:

My personal problem is city types commuting into central London in range rovers.... just wrong on so many levels

Perhaps if I agreed to never go racing round the New Forest or parts of Surrey on a bike, all those home-counties commuters (and faux-country set second-homers) would agree in return to never drive in my city?

The only problem is that there are more of those damn cars sold within the M25 than anywhere else in the UK

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ilovemytinbred | 9 years ago
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The unfortunate fact is that living in a city is likely to make you sick. You might or might not notice the acute symptoms but the long term term consequences are not nice.
If this level of pollution was causes by any other source there would be mass protests etc. But because 'we' directly cause it and are too lazy to use our feet it is not a popular topic.
Even the levels reported are misleading. What they call 'moderate' is pretty much above the EU limits and even 1/2 the 'low' level causes all sorts of unpleasant symptoms such as atrial fibrillation.
My nearest monitoring station in Bristol regularly has very toxic levels of anything it measures.

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levermonkey | 9 years ago
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In 2002 I came down to London from East Yorkshire. After a couple of months I was sent for a company medical and wheezed my way up to the doctor's surgery on the first floor.

After much poking and prodding, questions about asthma in the family (none) and chest problems (none until now) I was informed that I had 'London Lung'.

Put simply, my lungs were unused to the high pollution levels in London and were struggling to adjust. Luckily my lungs adapted over the next six months otherwise I would have had the stark choice of either giving up my job or using an inhaler.

Makes you wonder about the rising rates of childhood asthma.  39

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Nzlucas | 9 years ago
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So instead I should submit myself bad and air quality and the human petri dish of germs known as the London Underground...

The short term incentives and political will to do anything that is good and heathly for the general population is severely missing. We will never get better air quality while governments pander to there Eton mates who have too much profit margin at stake.

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Matt_Z | 9 years ago
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I used to have recurrent cough and pretty much once a month was catching a cold. Asthma was developing and I had no idea as to why, since I had no history of it. Since then I wear one of those Respro masks, and apart from the sweat and people calling you Bane I have had no more colds. I'm sorry, but the mayor telling you pollution (particularly NO2s) don't do anything is utter Bull....

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zanf | 9 years ago
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Quote:

Dr Paul Cosford, director for health protection at Public Health England agrees. During the pollution peak in the first couple of days of this month he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “For normal healthy people, I am on my bike today and other people should be. We don’t need to buy little white masks, we need to increase the amount of physical activity that we do because it’s great for our health.”

Mainly because those little white masks wont do anything about filtering out PM2.5 particulates.

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IanW1968 | 9 years ago
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Now I know one persons experience isn't conclusive or even indicative but here goes anyway.

I had a long planned ride across Suffolk( Woodbridge to Wells) and back the next day which coincided with the last period of higher than normal pollution. Day one was at times apocalyptic with dark skies and the need for daytime lights in what should have been pleasant and bright countryside. Very surreal at times.
I had a cough develop a few days later that persists to date, I believe connected.
Poisoning the air we breath is IMO a step too far even for our usual acceptance of taking up the wrong'n whilst smiling politely.

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londonbrick | 9 years ago
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Boris also said that navigating through the E&C gyratory on a bike is just fine. THis man is rather dangerous.

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Chuck | 9 years ago
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Isn't the word "themselves" missing from the sub-headline? As it is now I went to the article expecting to read that someone was claiming cyclists were causing more pollution or something.

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zeb replied to Chuck | 9 years ago
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Chuck wrote:

Isn't the word "themselves" missing from the sub-headline? As it is now I went to the article expecting to read that someone was claiming cyclists were causing more pollution or something.

Exactly, and that this is the Evening standard for you. They transformed the sense of the declaration with something which sounds more like an anti-bike rant, instead of a legitimate (but possibly wrong) health questioning.

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MKultra | 9 years ago
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The McGuffin.

Also to be found in the motion picture portfolio of the Cohen Brothers.

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HarrogateSpa | 9 years ago
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Does anyone know what a 'dead cat' debating tactic is?

I'm quite prepared to believe that Johnson uses such tactics, I've just never heard of them before. From the context, I assume that it means focusing on something irrelevant, and using that as a diversion.

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md6 replied to HarrogateSpa | 9 years ago
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HarrogateSpa wrote:

Does anyone know what a 'dead cat' debating tactic is?

I'm quite prepared to believe that Johnson uses such tactics, I've just never heard of them before. From the context, I assume that it means focusing on something irrelevant, and using that as a diversion.

it is introducing a distraction point so that everyone argues about the distraction rather than the issue...a little bit like asking if a cyclist crushed under a left turning lorry was wearing a helmet. The debate moved from how did they end up under a lorry and the safety of junctions etc. to the should helmets be compulsory argument.

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zanf replied to md6 | 9 years ago
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md6 wrote:
HarrogateSpa wrote:

Does anyone know what a 'dead cat' debating tactic is?

I'm quite prepared to believe that Johnson uses such tactics, I've just never heard of them before. From the context, I assume that it means focusing on something irrelevant, and using that as a diversion.

it is introducing a distraction point so that everyone argues about the distraction rather than the issue...a little bit like asking if a cyclist crushed under a left turning lorry was wearing a helmet. The debate moved from how did they end up under a lorry and the safety of junctions etc. to the should helmets be compulsory argument.

Case in point was Johnson veering into the territory of talking about headphones when there had been a spat of 6 cyclists deaths last October/November, as a way of not discussing piss poor infrastructure or HGV's.

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