Over the last few months we’ve been working away on our campaign:

• January saw us carry out an even bigger citizen science project: our volunteers placed pollution monitoring equipment in 100 locations across south east and east London. We joined forces with Don’t Dump On Deptford’s Heart, who conducted their own tests at the same time at another 50 locations, supported by Network for Clean Air. The project will give us a much better picture of the current levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in our neighbourhoods – particularly as our last experiment was carried out in the summer, and past experience shows that pollution is generally higher in the winter. We’re waiting for the results now, and we’ll let you know what we find out.
• We arranged for Dr Ian Mudway of King’s College London – you may remember hearing him speak at our public meeting last October – to extend his survey of the respiratory health of primary school children to Fossdene School, Charlton. This is important work that will show how children are affected by London’s air quality, and no data had been collected from south east London before now.
• We also formally constituted our group and elected our committee and officers. Our constitution’s available to anyone that would like to see it – let us know and we’ll send it on if you’re interested.
• Air quality in our local area has been in the news quite a bit recently. You might have seen some of the coverage:
  • The 50 most polluted roads in the UK (featuring the Blackwall Tunnel approach, the tunnel itself and New Cross Road, amongst others)
  • Britain’s 10 most congested roads are all in London (including the A205 from Catford to the Woolwich Ferry)
  • Citizen science projects around the country
  • London to become Europe’s first zero-emission city (judge for yourself on this one!)

Transport for London are currently carrying out a survey on air quality: it closes on 13 April. Please do respond and tell them that you don’t want a Silvertown tunnel adding to air pollution in our area!

Is there something else you’d like to know or would you like to be involved in any future volunteer projects that we run? You can drop us a line at info@silvertowntunnel.co.uk, or if you’re the Twitter type, you can find us at @NoSilvertownTnl

We will soon be up and running with a Bank account. If you think you would like to contribute to the funding of our campaign, please also get in touch at info@silvertowntunnel.co.uk.

Thanks for all your support so far.