‘Politics needs to be taken out of it. We need to live cleaner’
PETER O’Donnell had been out for a family meal and had just returned to his home when he was struck down by a near-fatal heart attack.
Over a ten-day period, Peter suffered a series of heart attacks and was only kept alive thanks to the expert teams in both Fairfield General in Bury and later Wythenshawe hospital.
Eighteen months later, Peter, from Rochdale, is on the waiting list for a heart transplant and has had an artificial pump fitted to help his heart function.
With his life hanging in the balance at the age of 58, Peter now has a sharpened perspective on what really matters.
“I’ve always had an interest in environmental issues,” he said. “This just kind of brought it out. “We all need to be doing things that are less destructive.
“I look at people revving their engines at traffic lights, especially outside schools, throwing out tons and tons of pollutants day after day, and you have to ask yourself why? Do you realise just how pernicious that is?
“If you were in an enclosed space with that for ten minutes you would die.”
“And yet we’re doing it outside into our atmosphere... it’s not surprising mother nature is getting annoyed.”
Mayor Andy Burnham has said it is unfair to ask Greater Manchester to make the changes alone and that fines could harm small businesses and cost jobs.
For Peter, the time of playing politics with air pollution has to stop. It is already costing an estimated 1,200 lives per year.
“Politics needs to be taken out of it,” he said. “This is existential. “We just need to live cleaner. “It shouldn’t be down to our kids telling us to do this, but they are quite right to do so,” said Peter.