00:00 MS
– Congestion Charge sign
Wide
– Congestion Charge road markings
CU
– car exhaust
Wide
– exterior King’s College London,
Franklin-Wilkins Building
CU
– exterior King’s College London, Franklin-Wilkins
Building
CU
– sequential Air Sampler unit
Wide
– traffic with air sampler unit in foreground
CU
– air sampler unit with traffic in background
MS
– traffic
MS
– low shot, traffic with pedestrians in background
Wide
– pan across traffic to air sampler units
Guide Voice: Cities all around the world are
watching London’s groundbreaking congestion charge experiment
to see how effective it is in cutting traffic and improving
London’s environment.
Its impact on pollution is also being closely monitored in
London by the Environmental Research Group, part of The School of
Health & Life Sciences at King’s College London. While
measuring air pollution across the southeast of the UK, they are
focusing particularly on London where air quality is amongst the
worst in Europe.
But their work goes much further. This year, with funding from
the Health Effects Institute in the USA, they are assessing the
impact of the Congestion Charging Scheme on both air quality and
the health of the population - for the first time tying together
both a study of the toxicology of pollutants AND an epidemiological
study of their impact on health.
00:47 SOT Professor Frank Kelly, Director,
Environmental Research Group, King’s College
London - "This is a very interesting
exercise, and the eyes of the world is really looking at London to
see how successful this scheme is, the idea is that by reducing
congestion you increase traffic speed and therefore decrease
emissions and ultimately improve air quality and the health of the
individuals that live and work in London."
01:06 Wide
– exterior, Gary Fuller enters monitoring station
Wide
– interior, Gary Fuller moves to equipment
CU
– reverse Gary Fuller picking up booklet
MS
– over shoulder, pressing buttons on unit
Wide
– map displaying air pollution levels
CU
– map displaying air pollution levels
Guide Voice: The Environmental Research Group
are continually measuring air pollution through a series of 80
monitoring points across the UK capital. While preliminary data
shows traffic in the Congestion Charge zone falling by as much as
30% air pollution levels can still be very high in places.
01:24 SOT Gary Fuller, King’s
College London - "The Marylebone
monitoring site is designed to measure air pollution in an extreme
roadside location and what we can do by looking at the
concentration at Marylebone Road where 70,000 vehicles a day pass
by we can look at the differences in pollution there to more
background locations, for example local schools and parks, and we
can see exactly what pollution is arising from the road. And if
we're looking for pollution from transport sources then we get the
largest signal possible there."
01:52 Wide
– traffic
CU
– traffic
MS
– over shoulder, Gary Fuller at computer
CU
– computer displaying graph information
MS
– The London Air Quality Network web page data
Wide
– Professor Frank Kelly and Researcher
CU
– Professor Frank Kelly and Researcher
CU
– Researcher putting phials into container
CU
– tilt down, test tube rack
CU
– lung biology phials in container
Guide Voice: Pollution controls on vehicles
mean that there has been a fall in carbon monoxide and nitrogen
dioxide, but ground level ozone and minute particles have
significant impact on health and show no sign of decreasing. The
monitoring team provide data to local authorities throughout South
East England, and are also a leading provider of Air Quality
Information to the public with up to the hour information shown on
the London Air Quality Network website.
The Environmental Research Group is a multi disciplinary group
of experts, as well as air monitoring, and modelling teams they
have bench scientists and clinical scientists who research and
measure the toxicity of different pollutants
02:30 SOT Frank Kelly - "First of
all we have to capture them, we’ve got special instruments
which will accumulate these tiny little particles which we cant
even see in the air they’ll collect them over a 24 hour
period onto a special filter. That filter then has to be brought
back to the laboratory, where its carefully examined and the
particles are extracted from it in such a way as we don’t
change the properties those particles are then put into a range of
bioassays which gives us a readout of the toxicity of the particles
and in that way we can try and work out what the particular toxins
are and how they vary between source to source."
03:05 CU
-Filter removed from case and placed on bench
CU
– test tube, containing filter, being shaken
CU
– Researcher’s face
MS
– Researcher using pipette on phials
CU
– pipette and phials
Wide
– incubator unit
CU
– incubator unit
Wide
– pollutant measuring equipment
CU
– pollutant measuring equipment
CU
– computer screen displaying test results
Guide Voice: First the particles are separated
off from the filters into a fluid, then when they are at a certain
concentration they can be added to samples of human lung fluid and
incubated for up to four hours. By measuring the way the pollutants
strip out antioxidants, like vitamins, from the fluid which lines
the lungs, the researchers can measure how toxic the different
particles are.
03:26 SOT Frank Kelly - "Current
research suggests that it’s the transition metals, iron and
copper, which are the most toxic components of the particles, we
are also worried about certain organic components the PAH’s
Polyaromatic Hydrocarbonates, both the metals and the PAH’s
can be tracked right back to the car exhaust and in particular we
are worried about diesel cars."
03:49 CU
– car exhaust
Wide
– buses and taxis
MS
– Congestion Charge sign
ECU
– air sampler unit
CU
– air sampler unit
Guide Voice: This kind of research also helps
feed back information to regulators and vehicle manufacturers, and
while a lot has been achieved, more must be done to cut pollutants
from transport in order to safeguard public health. While the world
watches to see how successful London’s congestion charge is,
it seems clear that air pollution, while moderated by the cut in
traffic, still represents a threat to all our
health
04:11 SOT Gary Fuller , King’s
College London - "Air pollution
is something that we should all be concerned about mainly because
of the health effects; it affects large sections of society. But
also we are all involved in the causes of air pollution the
decisions that we make on a daily basis with regard to our
transport choices or the energy that we use have a direct effect on
the air pollution that we breathe around us."
04:34 End
of Cut
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