January air pollution levels concern Londoners

Some London schools prevented children from playing outside in the first five days of January.

The City's polluted air breached its annual European legal limits and continues to be on high alert. School children, cyclists, and pedestrians are at most risk as London and the UK fails to apply the environmental law on air quality.

Sadiq Khan said there were more than 360 primary schools in areas where the city was breaching legal pollution limits.

Such busy roads leave pupils exposed to very high levels of pollution.

The Mayor's scrappage proposal — to pay drivers £3,500 to replace their old diesel cars — seems to be an appealing first step with Londoners.

"Give up the diesels," Dr Onkar Sahota, Chair of the Health Committee at City Hall said. "And to go over to petrol, or even better, to go over to electric cars."

"We need to make this easy for Londoners" Dr Sahota added.

Transport for London board member Mee Ling Ng agrees:

"We should just give money to people who own diesel cars," she said.

Yee-Liu Williams (voice in the piece) and I put together a radio feature asking Londoners how smog affected them during the first week of 2017.

You'll hear people from all walks of life including a father and his worry about his six-year-old son's asthma, two octogenarians recalling the great smog of the 50s and the Chair of the Health Committee at the London Assembly bringing up possible solutions.

Take a listen.

Note: because wix.com doesn't have the option to embed an audio file, I had to upload it as a video, but FYI don't be surprised when the image isn't changing, so no need to pay attention to the screen.