A new campaign led by medical professionals is calling for all diesel cars to be banned from London.<\/p>\n
Doctors Against Diesel claim 9,400 Londoners a year die prematurely<\/a> from breathing in toxic fumes from diesel engines.<\/p>\n
Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have committed to a ban on diesel vehicles by 2025.<\/p>\n
Opponents of the campaign have called the proposals “impractical” and warned a blanket ban could “backfire”.<\/p>\n
Doctors Against Diesel – comprising doctors, nurses and health professionals – are calling for Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, to commit to phasing out diesel vehicles from London.<\/p>\n
Mr Khan has already said he wants to get rid of diesel buses by 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n
According to the campaign, nearly 40% of all Nitrogen Oxides emissions and PM10 pollution, which is linked to decreased lung function, within London comes from diesel vehicles.<\/p>\n
The latest diesel cars are the “cleanest in history” according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).<\/p>\n
Figures released by SMMT show emissions of nitrogen oxides have reduced by 84% since 2000, while new “high tech” filters capture 99% of all soot particles and exhaust after-treatments form diesel engines.<\/p>\n
Professor Jonathan Grigg from Doctors Against Diesel told the BBC: “Deaths from paediatric asthma are disproportionately much higher in London than the rest of Europe.<\/p>\n
“Air pollution levels in London exceed legal limits and affect people’s health at every stage of life.<\/p>\n
“If we want to be serious about air pollution we need to be serious about diesel.”<\/p>\n
But Edmund King, president of the AA, called the proposal “fairly impractical”.<\/p>\n
He said: “We all want to clean up air quality but you’ve got to give time, you’ve got to give incentives. <\/p>\n
“Yes get rid of the worst offenders but I think a blanket ban would just backfire.”<\/p>\n
Transport for London is currently consulting on proposals to improve air quality<\/a> in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new campaign led by medical professionals is calling for all diesel cars to be banned from London. Doctors Against Diesel claim 9,400 Londoners a year die prematurely from breathing in toxic fumes from diesel engines. Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have committed to a ban on diesel vehicles by 2025. Opponents of the Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}