Readers join the dots between various recent reports on the effects of air pollution on human health and the part played by cars in turning the atmosphere toxic

Your report (School run is the ‘biggest polluter’ of air children breathe, 18 September) highlights the continuing failure of government to recognise the dangers of air pollution, specifically from diesel engines, and to take necessary action to limit the number of premature deaths. But the school run is only part of the problem facing infants, children and the wider population.

Many schools are on what are now extremely busy roads; only a minority have had an air pollution survey; and because of austerity measures they seldom have the resources to take remedial action by acquiring air purifiers. School buses keep their diesel engines ticking over for half an hour or longer and legal restrictions are simply ignored by bus companies and the police. Ice-cream vans in public parks and holiday resorts are diesel-powered, but they keep their engines running all day, even when located near children’s playgrounds.

The implications are worrying: key public health issues are not prioritised and there is only a limited willingness to impose legislation – for example, why are school buses, ice-cream vans and taxis not required to be electric-powered? The health consequences are unacceptable in terms of reduced life expectancy, but they are also class-specific, as many of the older schools were built in working-class areas, aggravating the widening health differential between the rich and the poor.

Professor Robert Lee

Birkenhead, Merseyside

• Parents or grandparents appear to believe they are protecting children by taking them to school by car. But last year you reported that “A range of experiments, some as far back as 2001, have shown that drivers inside vehicles are exposed to far higher levels of air pollution than those walking or cycling along the same urban routes” (Children in cars ‘at far greater risk from fumes’ than walking, 13 June 2017). Your report quoted Prof Stephen Holgate as saying air pollution “is nine to 12 times higher inside the car than outside”.

Why not organise a “walking bus”, if you live close to the school, or, if it’s too far, drive them part of the way towards it, park the car and walk with them to the school?

Dr Wiebina Heesterman

Birmingham

• Each month brings new evidence of the health effects of exposure to particulates (High pollution levels ‘causing huge reduction in intelligence’, 28 August). Now even the womb is not safe (Toxic air may reach placentas, study finds, 17 September). Thirty years ago this month the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations brought a breath of fresh air to the UK workplace. But this COSHH has since become a blunt instrument; while environmental air quality standards become ever more stringent, occupational limits gather dust.

Dusts in workplaces can differ from ambient environments, but it can’t be right that a worker can now legitimately breathe in levels within the workplace 100 times higher than is permissible on the pavement outside. The cognitive deficit from a lifetime’s occupational exposure to the UK limit for so-called “nuisance” dust could be equivalent to leaving school at age 13. All dusts that can reach the lung are now known to increase cancer risk, yet we cannot formally call them carcinogenic. By law the smokers’ shack is outside the factory, but breathing the dust inside the workplace may equate to a few passive fags’ worth every shift. The research is piling up, but while consumer powers advance, the rights of workers to fresh air appear to have bitten the dust.

Dr Brian Gardner

Glasgow

• On your front page with a headline about toxic air reaching placentas there was also a trail for the G2 feature by David Sedaris on “The joy of city walks”. Shouldn’t there have been a health warning accompanying this?

Bernard Lancaster

Mansfield, Nottinghamshire

• Jon Vidal is absolutely right in that substantially curbing car use in cities and towns will reduce air pollution (We have an air pollution crisis. It’s time to leave the car at home, 20 September). But although measures such as pedestrianisation will help, road pricing would have the greatest impact. Using modern tracking technology, pricing could be greater at times of greatest congestion and in areas of greatest pollution.

Road tax could be reduced to a notional amount, with drivers paying more if they drive more. The resulting revenue could be used to support buses, trains, cycling etc.

Mike Parker

Chair, Don’t Choke Britain 1991-2001

• Leaving the car at home may well help reduce local air pollution, but could exacerbate another damaging impact of our car-dependent society – the paving over of front gardens to provide parking. Electric vehicles may even accelerate the growth in this trend if car ownership increases with decreasing fuel costs, and the front drive becomes a convenient charging point. Green spaces make our cities liveable and already at least a quarter of UK front gardens in England are completely paved over. Time to green our cities and promote walking, cycling and better public transport.

Dr Ruth Gelletlie

Leeds

• When I wrote to both Sir Michael Wilshaw and Justine Greening MP in 2016 about air pollution wrecking health and reducing IQ, both Ofsted and the Department for Education replied that air pollution was outside their remit and a matter for Defra.

No government department will get involved in an issue that’s within the remit of another, and unless and until teachers, school staff and parents push for a change in that archaic system and get some action on the air pollution crisis, teachers and others who manage to reach retirement age can look forward to worse health and earlier deaths. Are teaching unions awake to this issue?

Michael Ryan

Shrewsbury

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