January’s smog broke recent records, but while glib comparisons with Beijing can result in action, they are also misleading

Newspaper headlines in January told us that London’s air pollution was worse than Beijing. BBC journalist Joseph D’Urso likened this to the heatwave weather stories each summer that say Brighton is hotter than Barcelona. Brighton is not normally as warm as Barcelona. Comparing particle pollution, London was worse than Beijing for four smoggy days, from 20 to 23 January, but over the whole month London’s particle pollution was around a quarter of that in the Chinese capital.

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However, January’s smog did break recent records. Still, foggy conditions trapped air pollution in our towns and cities. Twenty four places in London reached the top level of 10 in the government air quality index, the greatest number since the index was created in 2012. Traffic and wood-burning on the evening of Sunday 21 January led to the worst pollution peak since 2011. The smog was not just in London. Index level 10 was measured across south-east England, level nine in Northern Ireland and eight over the Midlands and Bristol.

Smogs catapult air pollution into the news and potentially up the political agenda. The deaths of an estimated 12,000 Londoners in the 1952 smog led to the Clean Air Act and an end to coal pollution in our cities. Images of Beijing smogs led to a change in environmental direction in China.

More recently, the spring 2014 smog caused an estimated 300 extra deaths across England, compared with normal spring pollution, or 600 compared with a clean air situation. This January’s smog will add to calls for more meaningful action to clean our air.