To think the air pollution issue in London is frightening?

[MrsOverTheRoad]

I feel worried about all my friends and family there. :(

www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/27/london-issues-red-alert-for-extremely-high-air-pollution?CMP=fb_gu

Dummies are you having a bad day? I have family and friends in London and I am worried about them. Not that I have to justify myself to you! You FOD too.

Yes I notice it, particularly when cycling or running to work. I have also had the black snot thing (nice!). Love getting out of London at weekends to visit family and friends - the first breath when I get out of the train/car is always so fresh by comparison to London!

DH cycles in central London every day and really notices when the pollution levels are up. I think after 25 years in London I am probably used to it but I know others aren't so. It's a real worry though

It's horrible. We lived very centrally when DD was a sick little baby with breathing problems, and I had to push her up and down London's most polluted road to hospital appointments. In her pram she was at perfect exhaust level. Only a wall stood between the garden of her nursery's baby room and an arterial road.

I feel less anxious now we've moved out to the 'burbs, but even here air pollution goes above safe levels.

We have black shadows round all the pictures in our lounge from leaving the windows open. When it is hot DC1 comes back from nursery with black specs of soot all over his neck from car exhaust fumes (outdoor area about 10m from busy road but separated by big building and hedge). Ours isn't even the worst polluted area! We are moving up the countryside in a few months and while I will miss London I won't miss the pollution. At our local tube it is so bad you can taste it.

Bringing up two kids in London, I worry about this all the time, especially as eldest is at high risk for developing asthma (has allergies etc).

Feel so guilty for making them live here - moving out would affect our quality of life badly (long commutes etc) but I feel we are putting out children's health at risk. We do. try to go out into the country/park at the weekends, I avoid zone 1 like the plague.

Would love to see more electric car charge points, I know loads of people who would get an electric car if they had somewhere to charge them (mostly on-street parking around here).

That screams massively to me that you have anxiety, and if you have it over something so small and unlikely to be a massive problem, you likely have it over a lot of other things too.

You know even proper qualified mental health professionals don't diagnose disorders over the Internet right?

Op is concerned about her loved ones becoming il due to a recognised health concern. That's not anxiety, that's what people do. That's normal.

Waiting for a bus this evening, the countdown board that tells you how long it is until the next bus had a message across the bottom. It said that air pollution in London is particularly bad today, so we should do our bit by using public transport or cycling. I thought

1. You're preaching to the converted - we are already using public transport, that's why we are at the bus stop.

1. The air quality is really poor today, so I'm not sure it's a good day to gulp in great lungfuls of air as we cycle.

One of the reasons I moved out of the city when I had kids,

I live surrounded by miles of woodland. Perfect.

DriveinSaturday - counter-intuitively, they think you breathe in LESS pollution if you cycle than if you take the bus (lower deck). That's because a) cycles aren't in the main 'stream' of traffic, but out to one side - and can take quiet roads; and b) because a cyclist's 'air intake' (nose) is quite high up, while a car/bus intake is down at exhaust level, so the air sucked into a car/bus includes loads of what the vehicle in front has spewed out.
But yes, mad to preach to bus riders!

It's completely grim. I'm as unallergic a person as can be, but my nose now runs constantly in London.

I want Sadiq Khan to close all roads that go past schools to everything other than buses and emergency vehicles; and in v short order to completely ban any vehicle that doesn't have an automatic cut-off when stationary. I was at traffic lights earlier today (on my bike) and there was a great throbbing motorcycle a few metres away - leaving aside the smell, just the NOISE was horrible.

I’m curious how can people tell ( without equipment etc) that the air around them is more polluted? Surely much of it is invisible?
I just moved from the Yorkshire countryside to S London and though it’s not suck a lungful in, hurts when it’s cold air... it’s not really much different. Just feels more humid.

Hmm. No, it's not great. But I've lived in London my whole life and never had black snot.

If I ever go into central London I get the black snot.
The sooner electric cars come in the better. Are the buses electric? We have some where I live. Mainly not though.

It is awful in the centre on a hot day but living in the countryside is much worse for people with pollen aggravated allergies, like hay fever. When we go to visit family in the country my poor DS has to be heavily doped up on antihistamines the whole time. So London is better for us.

Scientists monitor this. It is bad. Thousands of excess deaths.

I was glad to leave London for the countryside when we started our family for this reason. It's not some conspiracy theory, it's an actual real and recognised health concern. We have lived and worked in some of the most polluted cities in the world but don't want that for our children.

Black snot is a tube thing, not a London thing. I work in London but don't use the tube that much (prefer to walk if possible). I only get the black snot if I use it. It's the metal particles down there. Lovely!

I seem not to get black snot on the tube anymore (have lived in London all my life, and do currently commute by tube to central London). Is it cleaner (or just different) than it used to be? I take mainly the Victoria line, which got shiny new trains 5ish(?) years ago - is that somehow connected?! Like white dog shit, black tube snot feels like something I remember from days gone by!

I do hate the air in London though. It's gross. I live on a main road in zone 3, work in Westminster. My 5yo has asthma. The air is vile and so are the majority of drivers.

Agree with PPs that black snot is a tube thing. I walk through central London for half an hour every day and I don't get black snot, but I used to when I caught the tube.

So it will be nice and clean inside while using the car emits more?

Head - desk...

Was it supposed to be particularly bad today? It was a beautiful day in the morning, sunny and clear. I was out and about in Knightsbridge and it didn't feel different to any other day. Beautiful orange skies at sunset this evening, but maybe that's the smog?

To be honest, unless you're really rural, you could live anywhere in the UK and be near a main road or motorway. Even worse, you could be near power stations or up-wind from them.

We live in zone 1. None of my DC's friends have asthma as far as I know. We do have Japanese neighbours who go about daily wearing masks though.

It’s no different to smoking - the levels somewhere give the pollution levels and equivalent amount of cigarettes smoked.

All it will do is increase lung disease and shorten life span along with quality. For children it will be worse as they breath faster and this will be worse when transported inside cars in heavily polluted areas.

It’s not just London that gas pollution, plenty of other towns and cities have pollution above the levels deemed safe