This spring, for National Walk to School Week, Cambridge City Council and Arbury Primary School participated in a project to investigate air quality on popular routes to school.
Damaging effects of air pollution
While air pollution is bad for everyone, it has especially damaging effects on children. Their bodies are smaller and they breathe faster, inhaling more pollutants.
Some general adverse health effects can be childhood obesity and insulin resistance, pneumonia, asthma and leukemia. With their bodies and brains still developing, air pollution can also have damaging effects on their lung and brain development and contribute to reduced mental and motor development, or chronic lung disease in adulthood.
Though children are more at risk of negative health effects from air pollution than adults, they are generally powerless to change their environment and reduce their exposure, with decisions that can affect their health being taken for them by parents, teachers and society.
As well as that, an increase in sedentary lifestyles means some children are not as physically active, leading to more negative health outcomes.
This project helped students learn more about air quality and the choices to consider around their exposure to air pollution, while also encouraging them to keep fit by walking and cycling.
Exploring alternative routes to school
In the first session, after looking at the areas the students live in and how they get to school, they explored alternative routes that could be taken through different streets, together with teachers and a representative from the council.
The children could then consider how the air pollution varied on different routes. The alternative routes chosen were along quieter and smaller streets, away from the main roads where air pollution could be at its highest.
This theory was tested by Ricardo, a global consultancy who specialise in monitoring air quality. During school pick-up and drop-off times, a consultant walked the routes that were previously mapped out while carrying an air pollution sensor.
The dark blue colours on the map below indicate areas with low pollution, while red shows areas with high pollution.
The results showed pollution was surprisingly high on a normally quiet street. This turned out to be the case because of construction works going on at the time.
The findings showed that lowering your exposure to air pollution can be a bit more complicated than just avoiding main roads. Narrow streets, construction works, idling cars and high traffic levels all increase air pollution levels and avoiding them can protect your health.
The project aims to help provide young people with the tools to understand their environment and make informed choices, today and for the future.
