Roads wreathed in smog ...image shows the filthy air we breathe every day
IF only we could see what we breathe all the time...graphic design experts have made inner city pollution visible in this startling image of Britain’s seat of government.
Bustling Whitehall, packed with tourists and civil servants, is shrouded in an eerie mist composed of toxic chemicals emitted by exhaust pipes.
Big Ben looms out of the fog in the distance while the Cenotaph, Downing Street and Horse Guards are all within striking distance.
The image was created by a team working for a car leasing company to highlight the perils of air pollution from car exhausts.
Reading-based Select Car has produced images of nine other pollution-bound city centres including Paris, New York, Dubai, Bangkok and Istanbul.
The company, which wants drivers to consider more environmentally friendly vehicles, used the cities’ air quality index to show how polluted they are.
Among the pollutants released in exhaust fumes are carbon monoxide, which causes headaches and respiratory problems, and benzene, which is linked to leukaemia.
Carbon dioxide is also considered a dangerous greenhouse gas, making the oceans more acidic.
And hydrocarbons can worsen asthma while nitrogen oxide can cause lung irritation.
Yet scientists, who measure pollution with the Air Quality Index, say London scores 25, which gives it an air pollution of rating as “good” with no health implications.
New York and Seoul, South Korea, are also good with indexes of 30 and 48 respectively, but Paris is only “moderate” with a score of 80, sufficient to cause discomfort for hypersensitive people.
Delhi has a far higher AQI of 223, making it “very unhealthy”, while the worst index score recorded, 587 was in the industrial town of Bnei Brak, Israel, where air pollution is “hazardous”. A spokeswoman for Select Car Leasing said: “What we have tried to show is that exhaust emissions are there all the time.
“When the traffic queues have gone, the pollutants are still there, in the air, even though we cannot see them.
“This makes you wonder how differently we would feel if these chemicals emitted from car exhausts were visible in the air around us. Would we become more climate conscious?”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has published a study suggesting exhaust fumes are responsible for more deaths in Britain than traffic accidents.