Newham’s Draft Air Quality Action Plan 2019 – 2024 is an important document, full of necessarily technical and scientific jargon, but revealing and troubling for the Borough.

Maps show main roads of Newham coloured in blood red to indicate illegal levels of air pollutants. The text makes it clear that 14 percent of people in Newham are exposed to nitrogen dioxide levels above the air quality objective for human health.

On average all Newham residents are exposed to tiny air particles (PM2.5) that is 35 percent greater than the World Health Organization guidance.

It’s no surprise that the document then goes on to express concerns about the proposed Silvertown Tunnel in view of the high level of pollution in the area.

The tunnelling machines have arrived and the UK’s biggest road construction project is underway, at a cost of £2.2 billion and rising, but the fight to stop the project continues.

The biggest teachers’ union, the National Education Union, has been at the heart of fighting alongside the community against this climate thrashing project.

At the recent union conference a motion was passed recognising that environmental issues are at the heart of teaching work.

Liam O’Hanrahan, a teacher at Calverton Primary school and Newham NEU Assistant Secretary said: “As teachers our job is to keep the children we teach safe. How can we ignore the fact that the air they breathe is damaging their lungs and their development and increasing their risks of asthma, heart disease and cancers?”

The climate and ecological crisis in all its forms it the most pressing problem facing humanity which is why locally the Silvertown Tunnel campaign alongside the ‘Trees not Towers’ campaign in West Ham Park and action against the MSG sphere in Stratford, must all be won otherwise the fragile security of our planet will be further undermined.

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