HEDGING OUR BETS ON ROAD POLLUTION
As well as being a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, the transport sector is responsible for a large proportion of urban air pollution. According to the United Nations, almost two-thirds of the population in the European Union live in cities where air pollution is above permissible levels, making it a primary environmental health risk.
Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) is a world-leading centre whose vision is ‘clean air for all’. By looking at the impact of air pollutants on our quality of life, researchers are not only developing engineering solutions but also play a role in regulatory strategies.
Their recent research has uncovered the major role vegetation could play in tackling air pollution. Researchers looked at how three types of road-side green infrastructure – trees, hedges and a combination of trees with hedges and shrubs – affected the concentration levels of air pollution.
They found that roadsides that only had hedges were the most effective at reducing pollution exposure, cutting black carbon by
up to 63 per cent, followed by a combination of hedges and trees. Roadsides with only trees showed no positive influence on pollution reduction at breathing height as the tree canopy was too high to provide a barrier or filtering effect for road-level exhaust pipe emissions.
Professor Prashant Kumar, GCARE Director, said: “Urban planners should consider planting denser hedges, and a combination of trees with hedges, in open-road environments. Many local authorities have, with the best of intentions, put a great emphasis on urban greening in recent years. However, the dominant focus has been on roadside trees, while there are many miles of fences in urban areas that could be readily complemented with hedges, with an appreciable air pollution exposure dividend.”
Notwithstanding the rise in the number of electric cars, there are still a billion vehicles worldwide contributing to air pollution on our roads and the need to safeguard our health has never been higher.
surrey.ac.uk/global-centre-clean-air-research
The threats to our world are many — climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and overpopulation — but so are the opportunities to address these challenges and strive for a more sustainable future. At Surrey, our sustainability research is not only shedding new light on the issues but is also coming up with new solutions to address them.
We are developing a better understanding of the world’s resources; learning how environmental phenomena impact on society; studying the effects of our behaviours and attitudes on the environment; and creating technologies, processes and models that seek to improve our ability to live sustainably and well for us and future generations.
SURREY.AC.UK
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