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Brighton campaigners call for air quality monitoring - 20th January 2010
An environmental group is calling for a system which monitors potentially deadly pollutants to be reinstated in the city.
The device that previously recorded the level of harmful PM10 particles was removed - just a few years after Brighton breached acceptable limits.
This means air contained unsafe levels of harmful substances including sulphate, nitrate, ammonia and carbon.
Brighton and Hove, parts of Worthing and Littlehampton, were all among just eight UK zones that exceeded daily limits for PM10 particle matter values between 2005 and 2007, according to a National Audit Office report.
Campaigners from Lewes Road Clean Air Group claim the monitoring system, which was removed from the North Pavilion Gate by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in June 2008, should be replaced.
Roger Matthews said: We would like to see PM10 monitoring restarted and with more monitoring points across the city.
The main source of PM10s are vehicles and traffic is still increasing in the city - our studies show that there are now over 1,200 vehicle movements per hour on the Lewes Road.
The previous location for their one monitor was hardly a traffic hotspot, we would definitely like to see a monitor at the gyratory on Lewes Road.
Defra, who had not responded when The Argus went to press, replaced the PM10 system with a PM2.5 monitor which measures the level of smaller particles in the air.
They switched the systems after no breaches of PM10 were recorded in the first six months of 2008.
Mr Matthews said he would like to see both monitoring systems in Brighton and Hove.
He added: PM10 can be particularly damaging as they can penetrate deep into the respiratory system and even the blood stream and children are very susceptible to PM10 because of their height.
In terms of local air quality a car or van running on LPG produces 20 times less NOx than its equivalent diesel and 120 times fewer fine particles.
