Air Pollution & Health in Southall, London

17 Feb

INTRODUCTION

In the following co-produced report with Clean Air for Southall & Hayes, we put gathering evidence to highlight the susceptibility of the Southall community and the need for stricter air pollution guidelines. Our research will explain why in our analysis the air pollution guidelines used by Public Health England (PHE) to advise the Southall Waterside development did not take into consideration the susceptibility of the Southall community.

“People who already experience chronic stress are more susceptible to the effects of air pollution. For example, children who already experience chronic stress show an increased risk of developing asthma when exposed to air pollution, even at low levels.”

Centric Lab has done a three month study on the phenomena of the Southall community. We were instructed pro-bono to investigate if Southall Waterside, a real estate development led by St. Williams Homes LLP, had a role to play in the self reported spikes in health issues in the residents near the site.

Public Health England (PHE) has reported that the site poses no health risk to the community at Southall due to air pollution levels being below the recommended guidelines and dissipation rate of the air pollutants. However, Centric Lab is putting forward a new perspective, which takes into consideration the biological make-up and susceptibility of the Southall community. Not every community has the same level of susceptibility to air pollution. This is due to each community’s unique physical and psychosocial stressor exposures. Physical stressors refer to tangible external stimuli e.g. chemical/biological agents, while psychosocial stressors refer to external demands that exceed an individual's perceived abilities and resources to adequately respond.

In the following report, we put gathering evidence to highlight the susceptibility of the Southall community and the need for stricter air pollution guidelines. Our research will explain why in our analysis the air pollution guidelines used by Public Health England (PHE) to advise the Southall Waterside development did not take into consideration the susceptibility of the Southall community. In turn, these guidelines could still cause a health risk despite abiding by World Health Organisation (WHO) air quality suggestions. Additionally, we will delineate how using population level data like the ones used by PHE is not granular enough to give a reliable health risk indication. This would mean the Southall Waterside development consortium will need to take stricter measures as the current levels of air pollution are a health risk, especially as clean air should always be a priority.

Finally, we will also suggest PHE to conduct a more rigorous cross-sectional study to understand how the air pollution from the site is affecting the health of Southall at an individual level.

* Please note that this report is being shared with the permission of the community. Therefore, if you are quoting their work, please contact them and let them know their experience is making a difference in the collective goal of lowering air pollution on communities.

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