Rob Edwards

Revealed: the millions of metallic particles inhaled on the Glasgow subway

from Sunday Herald, 19 May 2013

Environmentalists are demanding urgent investigations into air pollution on the Glasgow subway after a snapshot survey by the Sunday Herald’s New Era magazine discovered that passengers were breathing in tens of millions of tiny metallic particles that might damage their health.

We found levels of pollution by microscopic particles on the subway - known in the city as the Clockwork Orange - up to ten times higher than on the streets outside and up to eight times above the World Health Organisation’s recommended daily limit.

Experts estimate that passengers on the subway for 45 minutes could each inhale at least 60 million particles. Anyone spending the same amount of time at one of Scotland’s busy railway stations could breath in 10 million particles, or 2.5 million on a train journey between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Because the particles in the electric-powered subway are likely to be mostly iron oxide from the grinding of wheels against rails, they may not be as dangerous as the sooty particles emitted by trains or cars driven by diesel engines. But experts and campaigners all agreed that the risks required serious examination.

Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland described the concentrations of particle pollution on the subway as “alarming”. He called on Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), which runs the subway, to take the results very seriously.

“This problem urgently needs further investigation," he said. "Confirmation of these results would require decisive action to reduce pollution.”

Air pollution: the mass killer that keeps on killing

from Sunday Herald New Era magazine, 19 May 2013

It’s everywhere, and it kills thousands of people every year in Scotland. But despite more than a decade of efforts to reduce it, it seems worse than ever.

Air pollution is one of the plagues of the modern age. The fumes that spew from vehicle exhausts, the tiny particles disgorged by diesel engines and the dust and grime of urban living make life much less pleasant - and much more dangerous.

Yet over the last ten years governments, councils and regulatory agencies seem to have made little difference in reducing the toxins we breath in. On the streets of towns and cities across the country, on bikes and in cars, trains, buses and taxis, we are exposed to concentrations of pollutants that could damage our health.

Today New Era publishes the first ever maps showing the pollution street-by-street in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth (see below). Based on government monitoring for the toxic gas, nitrogen dioxide, these reveal the pollution hotspots that those with heart or lung conditions, or who are generally worried about their health, might want to avoid.

We also publish a map showing the 13 places with air pollution problems – or “air quality management areas” - identified by local authorities, along with the names of the most polluted streets. As well as the big cities, these include towns such as Dunfermline, Falkirk, Paisley and Bearsden (see below).

Action needed to get people out of their cars

Comment from Sunday Herald, 03 February 2013 

Scottish ministers, like elected politicians the world over, have long been reluctant to introduce measures that would make motoring less attractive and more expensive.

But evidence of the multiple ways in which our addiction to private cars is harming us is growing, and is difficult to dispute.

As the Sunday Herald reveals today, cars and other motor vehicles produce noise and air pollution in our urban centres, threatening the health of millions of people.

According to scientists, they are also a leading cause of the global warming that is dangerously disrupting the climate here and abroad. Yet, in the Scottish Government's long-awaited plans to cut climate pollution published last week, transport is by far the weakest link.

Ending our love affair with the car to save humankind

from Sunday Herald, 03 February 2013

Scotland must end its love affair with the car. That is the blunt message from leading experts in the face of mounting evidence of the havoc wreaked on the climate and communities by the internal combustion engine.

The Sunday Herald reveals today that fumes from car exhausts are poisoning the air in cities and towns across the land, leading to thousands of premature deaths. The noise from vehicle engines is also blighting the lives of nearly a million people, while high speed limits are boosting pollution and accidents.

According to Professor James Curran, the chief executive of the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency, pollution from transport is also one of the major causes of climate change. “In my view this is the greatest threat faced by humankind so we’ve got to do something about it,” he said.

“If you do need to travel, try walking, cycling or public transport, all of which have lower emissions than cars. If you really have to drive, try car-sharing, choose the cleanest car you can, and drive it as economically as you can.”

He told the Sunday Herald that he was a realist. “I know that weaning people off their cars isn't easy,” he said. “But we must get serious about dealing with climate change, and meeting our national target of a 42% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.” 

Revealed: the 26 places in Scotland poisoned by air pollution

from Sunday Herald, 03 February 2013 

Fumes from vehicle exhausts breached air pollution safety limits at 26 urban sites across Scotland last year and put the health of millions of people at risk, according to government monitoring results.

There were toxic concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and tiny particles emitted by cars, lorries and buses in the streets of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Paisley, Bearsden, Rutherglen, Perth, Falkirk and several other towns in 2012 (see table below).

According to experts, the levels are high enough to cause breathing problems and heart attacks. Up to 3,000 people are officially estimated to die every year from air pollution in Scotland, compared to 190 deaths from road accidents.

The worst pollution was at Hope Street in the centre of Glasgow, raising doubts as to whether the city’s air will be safe to breath for the thousands of athletes and visitors expected to flock to the Commonwealth Games in the summer of 2014.

“Air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to people's health,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the new director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. “Fumes from cars, lorries and buses kill off at least 10 times the number who die in road crashes every year.”

Move to cut the car noise that damages health

from Sunday Herald, 03 February 2013

Multinational car companies are facing new curbs to silence the excessive traffic noise that blights the lives of nearly a million people across Scotland.

The European Parliament is due to vote this week on legislative proposals to force manufacturers to introduce quieter engines and exhausts, amidst mounting evidence of the damaging impacts on public health.

MEPs are being urged by environmental campaigners in Scotland and Brussels to back the moves. But they are being fiercely opposed by car manufacturers, including the German sports car company, Porsche.

According to official figures, as many as 945,100 people in Scotland are exposed to daytime noise levels from traffic above 55 decibels. The World Health Organisation says that this will damage performance at work and school, disturb sleep and impair hearing and heart functions.

Tougher speed limits would cut climate pollution, says report

from Sunday Herald, 03 February 2013

Reducing vehicle speed limits to 40mph would cut climate-wrecking carbon emissions, according to a report from the government-funded Transport Research Laboratory.

It also says that such a move would cut injuries and deaths from traffic accidents, as well as noise and air pollution. And it warns that motorists often over-estimate the time that they will save by driving faster. 

The report was commissioned by the university-backed Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation for a seminar on speed limits and climate change taking place this week. Organised by the Scottish government’s high-ranking 2020 Climate Group, it is aimed at addressing one of the “more challenging” barriers to cutting climate pollution.

Big rise in cyclist and pedestrian injuries puts ministers under pressure

from Sunday Herald, 11 November 2012

The number of cyclists and pedestrians seriously injured on Scotland’s roads has risen sharply, putting ministers under mounting pressure to cut accident rates by investing in more safety measures.

The latest official figures from the government’s Transport Scotland agency reveal that there was a 13% jump in the number of cyclists suffering serious injuries in 2011, compared to 2010. There was a similar 12% increase in the number of seriously injured pedestrians.

This has prompted a barrage of angry demands from politicians, transport campaigners, cycling and walking groups for Scottish ministers to boost funding for cycleways and footpaths, better roads and tougher speed limits. Otherwise, they warn, more cyclists and pedestrians will be needlessly injured or killed.

The revelations come at the end of a week that saw two of the UK’s most famous cyclists knocked off their bikes. On Wednesday evening, Bradley Wiggins, the winner of the Tour De France and a four-time Olympic champion, was hit by a van near Wigan in Lancashire.

He spent a night in hospital, and was discharged with a bruised hand and ribs. Coincidentally, the head coach for Britain’s cycling team, Shane Sutton, was in a collision with a car in Manchester on Thursday morning, putting him in hospital with bleeding on the brain and a fractured cheekbone.

The two crashes highlighted the dangers that cyclists face, and led to multiple calls for better safety provisions in England. But the new figures unearthed by the Sunday Herald show that there are also escalating and alarming risks in Scotland.

Scotland failing to meet climate change targets

for Sunday Herald, 24 June 2012

Scotland is in danger of losing its much-lauded world-leading role in cutting climate pollution unless it takes urgent action to reduce carbon emissions from cars and homes, ministers have been warned.

With current policies, the Scottish government is on track to miss its historic climate change targets - agreed three years ago today - every year except one between 2010 and 2022. 

And according to a powerful coalition of more than 60 organisations, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS), this is because ministers are failing to do enough to curb vehicle exhaust fumes and to save energy in buildings by better insulation.

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act was unanimously passed by the Scottish Parliament on 24 June 2009. It committed the Scottish government to cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 42% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.

But an analysis for SCCS shows that if the government continues on its current path, the only year in which it will not breach its carbon budget before 2022 is 2013. By 2022 emissions will be more than five million tonnes, or 13%, over the target.

A year without owning a car

comment from The Guardian, 22 September 2011

It started with a shake of the head, and that annoyingly knowing garage mechanic grin. “Well, sir,” he said, and began listing a baffling series of problems to do with tyres, brakes, springs, linings, discs and the exhaust catalyst.

My Saab 900 was in for its MOT, and had failed spectacularly. The minimum cost to make it roadworthy, the mechanic told me, would be £2,240 - though he would recommend additional repairs amounting to well over £3,000.

It was then I knew that my 11-year-old, 120,000-mile affair was over. The car that had played the soundtracks to my summer holidays, taken my Mum and Dad to the beach, and seen my girls become women, had to go.

I hadn’t meant to become emotionally attached to a large lump of polluting plastic, glass and metal, but it happened. So when the Saab was transported up the street on its way to the scrapyard, I felt an unexpected pang.

That was over a year ago now, and in recent days I’ve been assessing what we decided to do next. My partner and I thought we would try, for the first time in 25 years, to manage without owning a car. If it didn’t work, we said, we could always buy another one.

U-turn over A9 crossing after blockade threat

from Caledonian Mercury, 23 May 2011

Walkers, cyclists and horse-riders who threatened to blockade the A9 in the Cairngorms have forced a government U-turn after the personal intervention of the First Minister, Alex Salmond.

Transport Scotland has previously refused to provide access for a historic route across the newly dualled carriageway at Crubenmore, just south of Newtonmore. But now it is planning to construct an underpass.

The government agency’s change of heart follows an intervention by Salmond during the election. He told campaigners he shared their concerns and, if re-elected, would instruct officials to go-ahead with a crossing.

Transport Scotland said it was now determining the feasibility of building an underpass with a view to bringing forward the necessary road orders. “It is expected this work could be completed by mid-August,” said a spokeswoman for the agency.

It may take another two years, though, until the crossing is actually built. Officials met with representatives of walking and horse-riding groups on Friday to discuss what was required.

Angry access protestors ‘will block A9’

from Sunday Herald, 06 March 2011

Countryside campaigners angry at being barred from a historic route across the A9 in the Cairngorms are planning an escalating series of protests that will blockade the road and delay motorists.

Unless the government’s Transport Scotland digs a tunnel or builds a bridge at Crubenmore, just south of Newtonmore, it will have “blood on its hands” because people will be killed in accidents attempting to cross a new dual carriageway, they warn.

Walkers, cyclists and horse riders are demanding that politicians commit to constructing a crossing in the next few weeks. Otherwise, they say that on 20 April they will launch a summer of protest walks along the A9 that will cause lengthening delays to traffic.

“If our protests are unsuccessful, I am quite prepared to drive up and down the A9 roadworks all summer with my horse and carriage to show my contempt,” said Ruaridh Ormiston, who runs Newtonmore Riding Centre.

He is furious that dualling the A9 will prevent him from taking pony-trekkers along one of the old military roads built by General Wade to control the Jacobites in the early 1700s. The route is also popular with walkers, cyclists and local people.

Ministers lambasted for failing to cut government climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 5 December 2010

Scottish ministers have been accused of “double standards” by their environmental advisers because they are busting targets to cut the climate pollution caused by government activities.

The accusation comes from the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), which is being closed down in March. Environmentalists allege that ministers are scrapping the agency in order to silence its embarrassing criticisms.

This week the SDC is publishing its latest assessment of the Scottish government’s environmental performance. It will conclude that overall the government’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions by cutting energy use and travel have been “poor”.

The use of energy in government buildings actually rose by 2.5% in 2008-09 and is now above the baseline level set a decade ago, the SDC report point outs. “It is therefore extremely hard to see how the government will meet its target of a 12.6% cut in emissions by 2011,” it says.

According to the report, seen by the Sunday Herald, there has been “little progress” on transport, with emissions “flatlining”. Although there has been a shift from air to rail travel by ministers and officials, 43% of travel emissions still came from flights.

Ministers backtrack to protect the car

21 November 2010

Controversial plans to cut speed limits, increase parking charges and bill drivers for using roads have been ditched by the Scottish government.

The proposals, contained in a previously leaked report, have been dropped in the latest version published by ministers last week. The U-turn has angered environmental groups, who warn that targets to cut climate pollution will be breached without moves to curb the car.

In the draft report on “proposals and policies” to combate climate change leaked in September, there were a series of ideas for discouraging car use. A cut in the speed limit on some roads from 70mph to 60mph was proposed.

So was a £300-a-year workplace parking levy, alongside a 50% increase in on-street parking charges. A road-pricing scheme that could have cost motorists an extra five pence per kilometre was also mooted.

The suggestions prompted howls of rage from businesses and the car lobby, and as a result they have all now been quietly dropped. They were omitted from a report published almost unnoticed along with the budget last week.

Political parties under powerful pressure to cut climate pollution

08 October 2010

All Scotland’s political parties are being urged to include a series of radical new promises to cut climate pollution in their manifestos for next year’s Holyrood elections.

The call comes from a powerful coalition of interests from across Scottish society representing as many as two million people. The coalition, which includes trade unionists, students, faith groups, aid charities, environmental organisations and campaign groups, has previously been influential in shaping Scotland’s policies to combat climate change.

The groups are calling for manifesto commitments to a £100 million-a-year home insulation programme, a £9 million-a-year increase in the international aid budget and an investment of up to £120 million to restore peat bogs. They also want reductions to speed limits and curbs on new road building.

The Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition brings together over 60 groups, including the trade union Unison, the National Union of Students, Oxfam and WWF Scotland. Its lobbying helped persuade the Scottish Parliament last year to introduce world-leading targets to reduce climate pollution.

Now the coalition is trying to ensure that in the run-up to the election next May, every political party makes the promises that will be needed to meet those targets. The aim is to cut greenhouse gas emissions 42% by 2020.

Thousands sharing lifts to work in commuter revolution

from Sunday Herald, 03 October 2010

A quiet commuter revolution is changing the way that people get to work, saving them money, making travel less lonesome and helping the environment.

In the last couple of years there has been a massive boom in the number of drivers sharing lifts to work across Scotland, according to figures obtained by the Sunday Herald.

Since September 2008, the number of people who have signed up to one of Scotland’s online “liftshare” networks has increased by 50% from 16,200 to 24,300. There has been a similar rise throughout the UK, with numbers leaping from 270,000 two years ago to nearly 400,000 now.

And the boom is set to continue, with the celebration of the UK’s first ‘liftshare week’ from Monday, designed to recruit more drivers and sharers. Organisers are distributing wild-west-style “wanted” posters urging people not to be “a lone ranger”.

Winning the war on cars: how ministers plan to cut climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 5 September 2010

Stricter and lower speed limits, higher parking charges and a five pence per kilometre road pricing scheme are being proposed by the Scottish government as part of a major new offensive to cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate.

A key policy report leaked to the Sunday Herald reveals that ministers are also considering big increases in spending on walking and cycling, grants for low-carbon cars, and boosts for buses and trains.

A further series of radical plans are being drawn up to meet the ambitious target of cutting climate pollution 42% by 2020. These include a renewed £1 billion-plus home insulation scheme, a massive tree-planting programme, bans on dumping waste as landfill, and moves to force farmers to clean up their act.

The government’s new package of 30 “proposals and policies” to combat climate change has been warmly welcomed by environmentalists. But some of the measures have already provoked the ire of the car lobby, businesses and farmers.

The Association of British Drivers dismissed the curbs on cars as “lunatic”. They would spark widespread anger, claimed Peter Spinney, the association’s co-ordinator in Scotland.

Ministers under fire for failing to green government

from Caledonian Mercury, 26 May 2010

Scottish ministers have been condemned by their own expert advisers for failing to meet most of their targets for cutting pollution and greening government.

Their performance has been described as “poor” and “worrying” by the Sustainable Development Commission, which was set up to advise ministers on environmental policy. Ministers will only be forced to improve if they are subject to external scrutiny, the commission warned.

The Scottish government’s failure to live up to its much-vaunted green credentials has also been lambasted as depressing and hypocritical by environmental groups and opposition politicians. In its defence, the government says that it is now trying harder.

When ministers’ latest environmental performance report was published a few days ago, the spin was all positive. “The Scottish government is taking action to improve its environmental performance as it pledges to lead by example,” boasted the news release.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the blurb, the real picture revealed by the report for 2008-09 was very different. Of the eleven environmental targets ministers set themselves, eight are on track to be missed.

Ministers face court action over Aberdeen bypass

from Sunday Herald, 25 April 2010

Plans for one of Scotland’s major new road developments will be thrown into doubt this week as campaigners announce they are taking the Scottish government to court.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that a decision by ministers to give the go-ahead to the £400 million Aberdeen bypass is to be challenged in the Court of Session by the local campaign group, Road Sense.

Legal opinions commissioned by the group make them “quietly confident” that they will be able to trip up ministers for failing to ensure that the road and its damaging impacts were given proper and lawful consideration.

They say that a public inquiry was unfairly restricted and its findings of fact were inadequate. They also allege that the road has violated the rights of those facing eviction along its route, and could breach European law by damaging colonies of bats.

“We have been forced into taking this action after years of being sidelined, stonewalled, ignored and misinformed,” said William Walton, the chair of Road Sense. The group has been opposing the bypass, known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR), for more than four years.

Eyjafjallajökull: the little flick of ash that stopped us flying

from Sunday Herald 18 April 2010

Volcanoes can change history. About 74,000 years ago, Mount Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra exploded with a violence unlike any other, releasing enough pulverised molten rock to make two Everests.

The huge dust clouds that surrounded the globe blocked out the sun and caused a prolonged “volcanic winter”, scientists say. This made life very tough for humankind’s Neanderthal ancestors, reducing them to no more than a few thousand breeding pairs and for ever altering their evolution.

Compared to this, last week’s eruption in Iceland was nothing. It was not a nuclear-scale explosion, more a light flick of ash from a cigarette. Yet such is the vulnerability of 21st century international air transport that its consequences have been startling, far reaching and hugely damaging - and they could get worse.

Air travel has ground to a halt for at least three days, with mass disruption now expected to continue into next week. Apart from a handful of flights on the west coast, the UK has been in total lock-down, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers, dislocating businesses, and wrecking countless weddings, funerals, holidays, conferences and sporting fixtures.

Flights from America into Europe have dropped by two-thirds, and up to 17,000 flights a day have been cancelled within Europe. The airlines are losing at least £130 million a day, according to the International Air Transport Association, with companies like British Airways and Lufthansa facing losses of maybe £10 million a day.