by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Truck drivers have the highest overall exposure to air pollution and yet are being overlooked in the air quality debate, according to scientists at King’s College London. Research by UK environmental charity Hubbub in cooperation with the King’s College and The Times examined how poor air quality affected people living and working in London.
Amsterdam will stop its pilot with 8 City Trees to improve air quality. It was stated that in the current set of City Trees will not have a significant impact (defined as a 10-20% decrease) of the concentrations of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide on the facades of houses in the Amsterdam Valkenburgerstraat.
Exhaust from vehicles is a major source of air pollution worldwide. A by the ICCT study links state-of-the-art vehicle emissions, air pollution, and epidemiological models to estimate the impacts of transportation sector emissions on ambient PM and ozone and associated health impacts in 2010 and 2015.
Exposure to environmental pollution is thought to cause as many as 9 million premature deaths each year. The largest health impacts are associated with air pollutants and particulate matter in particular. The latter is thought to cause an average reduction in life expectancy of 6 to 12 months in Europe.
A new report presents the results of the Amsterdam AMS Stimulus Project ‘Green Junkie: Plant-powered air cleaning’. In this project, the authors tested the idea that a specially developed plant named Green Junkie could increase air quality along roads intensively used for car traffic.