Air Quality in schools

[lidac]

Hi, my boy is in Reception at a Central London school and I am worried about pollution. Is anybody talking about air purifiers at schools? I only found a couple of schools online that have them. Does anyone have kids that go to a school with air purifiers? Thank you.

every school in our London borough has above-recommended levels of pollution . No purifiers that I've heard of but some are trying things like green walls and stopping through traffic at the start and end of the school day.

I'm not a fan of purifiers myself - we got one for use at home and it made the air very dry and killed my maidenhair fern!

is the school set back from the road?
surrounded by hedges/trees?
is (illegal) parking/illegal idling close to school enforced?

Hi RiverTam, thank you for the message, I am sorry to hear about your maidenhair fern. I didn't realise they dried the air..
I saw that Notting Hill Prep has an air purifier and Sir John Cass in the City as well Sir Christopher Hatton in Clerkenwell, it would be good to hear if the parents are happy from the results.

The school is at an intersection, there is a park between the school and the busy road, and just the pavement next to the not so busy road. Idling is not enforced, although there are signs that say no idling. A group of us go around telling people not to idle.. Not ideal, but apparently there is 10 minute grace period before you can enforce it

at one point our school did have a traffic warden there every morning stopping people from idling but it didn't last.

A traffic warden is a good idea, I might write to the Council. A live air quality monitor would be a good idea too..

This is a good map (scroll down) that shows air quality in schools in London: www.clientearth.org/clean-air-parents-network-resources/

Hi OP

There’s been quite a lot of discussion on this at our school. The advice that we’ve had is that air purifiers are not terribly effective if windows are open or people keep coming into and out of the room. They are also very energy inefficient.

Which borough is your school in? It’s likely that the council are looking at this already.

did you find dc school on the map?
my dc school isn't
but it's set back from the road, the playground backs onto a green and between school and road are hedges and large trees.

The air quality in your home may well be just as bad.

Running more energy inefficient devices is not the answer.

Reducing vehicle emissions is going to help - not sure how long before effects of UKEZ are expected to be evident in London. The policy of phasing out both petrol and diesel vehicles will help too, but it is some years before that starts.

Quite a few schools round here have 'no idling' signs. I was quite shocked that people ever that - the horses 'money to burn' springs to mind

Edith there's a school on my mum's road - in the winter they idle so they can run their heating, in the summer for the air con. Parents can be there way in advance of the end of day. Drives her nuts.

idling on public roads is illegal.
a couple of schools near have closed the access roads at school run times.
funny enough it has stopped 'car sitters' almost completely.

yes, that's what our school is aiming for. Hope it'll happen soon.

A good air purifier consumes 20Watts/hour, a light bulb 90W/hour, a desktop computer 400W/hour. We turn on the light when we can't see and don't even consider turning off our computer at work when we go to lunch.

The ULEZ might have an effect, and I am all for it, but it will be minimum a year before we can tell if it makes any difference, and in the meantime our kids breathe pollutants. The window argument is a valid one, but the same can be said for heating or air con -we don't think of energy efficiency or open windows before installing those.

Unfortunately idling is not enforced, although illegal. The car has to be idling for 10 minutes before you can fine them and Councils admit that they have never fined anyone.

Move to a less polluted area of the country is probably the best solution!

Unfortunately, I agree with trinity0097. People who choose to send their children to school in central London know, at least to some extent, that their children won't be breathing the same air that they would get on the Dorset coast. There are lots of great things about living in central London but the air quality isn't one of them.

I do have sympathy for making more effort to prevent people from idling. However, giving a school a hard time about installing air purifiers is something I'm uncomfortable with. There's an element of "we're burning fossil fuels to get around so lets burn some more to run a purifier to mitigate the effect of the fossil fuels we just burned".

As a society, we need to use less stuff and less energy.

Thank you all for your comment. This is about finding solutions and trying to make world a better place. If I give up and move to the country then my problem is solved, but many others that cannot move will still have to deal with this.