The Mayor of London has repeated his claim that "three quarters of the occasions when legal limits of PM10 concentrations were exceeded during February and March were due to pollution blown in from continental Europe".
He implies that this was a major factor in Marylebone Road having 29 bad air days so far this year. London is allowed a total of 35 days in which it exceeds European limits for PM10s.
The Mayor states that: "…we will also firmly but politely point out that our friends in Brussels could greatly assist us in improving the air quality of London by tightening up the limits of emissions of the member states."
A response issued by the European Commission concludes that: "These arguments explain why transport of air pollutants from the continent would not influence local air quality significantly."
Darren Johnson said: "The Mayor is using the European Commissioner’s visit to blame Europe for the Mayor’s own failures on air pollution. It is like inviting a neighbour for tea and blaming them for your chimney being blocked with soot.
"The Mayor has taken numerous backward steps which have made air pollution worse than it should be in London. He appears to be saying that this ill wind is gathering up all the pollution from Paris and dumping it directly on Marylebone Road, whilst by-passing areas like Bromley, Havering and Harrow which are all under the European pollution limits.
"The Mayor is claiming that the new ideas like gluing the pollution to the road will definitely deliver healthier air this year and avoid a massive fine from the European Commission, yet the evidence from Marylebone Road is saying otherwise. The Mayor also claims that the European Commission has been informed of his new policies and is impressed by them. Yet the Commission has stated that it wants a revised London plan.
"The reason why Londoners are still suffering from such high levels of air pollution is a combination of the Mayor taking backward steps and his failure to act decisively with a ban on all but the cleanest vehicles entering central London."
Footnotes
1) Joe Hennon, European Commission Spokesman for the Environment, said: "Air pollution knows no borders, of course, and it may well be that air pollution from continental Europe is transported to the UK during particular meteorological episodes. But these episodes are usually seldom, for reasons I will come to, and most of the time the dominant south westerly winds in the UK transport the air pollution in the opposite way, i.e. from the UK to Northern Europe.
"Inverse wind circulation from the east to the west, driving air pollution from the continent to the UK, usually occurs during the passage of cyclonic and anticyclonic weather systems over Europe. Since cyclonic weather systems are always associated with rainy weather that efficiently scavenge air pollution, only anticyclonic weather systems passing in the the vicinity of the UK may be associated with air pollution transport that originates on the European continent.
"It should however be noted that due to the long distance travelled by the continental air masses, the air pollution levels are very much diluted in comparison to the regionally and locally emitted air pollutants.
In addition to this, anticyclonic weather types are always associated with temperature inversions at low altitude that decouple the local emissions at low altitude from the continental pollution transport at a higher altitude. In other words the continental transport would remain above the inversion layer and would not be transported to the ground.
"These arguments explain why transport of air pollutants from the continent would not influence local air quality significantly."