Launch of the Healthy Air Manifesto

We held a photo opportunity outside Leicester Town Hall, at 5.30pm, on the 2^nd of April, to launch the updated version of the Healthy Air Manifesto for Leicester. The manifesto sets out proposals for improving Leicester’s air quality.  The launch is timed to coincide with the start of the campaign for the local elections on the 2^nd of May. To highlight the extent of the problem we wore face masks, including, in some cases, proper gas masks.

Air pollution has been shown to greatly increase people’s likelihood of developing lung disease, heart disease, strokes, dementia and even depression.  It has also been shown to adversely affect lung development in growing children and to impair cognitive development.

Leicester has particular problems with air pollution due to the layout of its roads and due to lying in a bowl, which traps polluted air; and last year the World Health Organization identified Leicester as having some of the worst levels of air pollution in the UK.  Some progress in improving Leicester’s air quality has been made in recent years, but Friends of the Earth believe that much more still needs to be done.   

Malcolm Hunter, a spokesperson for Leicester Friends of the Earth said:

“Air pollution has wide ranging effects on people’s health and contributes towards hundreds of extra deaths a year, in Leicester alone.  Urgent action is needed and we are therefore calling on all candidates in the forthcoming local elections to commit to implementing those policies in this Manifesto that are within the City Council’s power to implement and to lobby central government to act on those that are not.”