Air pollution in London: Facts and figures
Recently publicized facts and figures around London’s air pollution include those listed below:
- Road transport causes almost half of London’s air pollution. Tweet This!
- Thousands of premature deaths every year are caused by poisonous gases and particles, which increase the risk of asthma, dementia and strokes.
- Children are severely affected by London’s toxic air: if exposed to the same levels of pollution during their lifetime, children born in London in 2010 will lose two years of life expectancy, due to air pollution.
- One in ten Londoners under 18 years of age has asthma.
In view of these facts and figures, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, said: “I want to reduce poisonous emissions by more than half by 2025 across the whole of London. One of the ways we will do this is by cutting the number of dirty vehicles on London’s roads.”
To achieve this target:
- All new double-deck buses will, from 2018, be hybrid, hydrogen or electric.
- By 2020, 5,000 older buses will be upgraded.
- 12 low-emission bus zones will be introduced.
- By 2037, London’s bus fleet will be completely zero-emission.
- Drivers of older, more polluting vehicles now have to pay £10 to enter central London.
- Starting in 2019, harmful emissions will be reduced by 50 per cent through the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone.
- A Cleaner Vehicle Checker will make it easier for Londoners to buy cleaner cars.
References:
This article is based on published information by the Mayor of London. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/shorthand/cleaner_vehicles/