Bonjour nos amis! This week’s blog comes to you from the town of Chenac-Saint-Seurin-d'Uzet in the Charente-Maritime département in France. What it lacks in short snappy names it makes up for in lovely clean air (as well as a producteur of Pineau de Charentes, a local wine fortified with Cognac, not 500m from our accommodation).
This is our second blog post from France - the first one was in March 2023 from Paris. So, has much changed in France in the past year (air quality-wise, that is), and is there much difference in the air quality between Paris and the south-west of France?
Fatter, heavier, deadlier
Paris has just hosted the Olympics and in the run up to this, some significant events took place. Firstly an intervention: the people of Paris voted to triple the cost of parking an SUV from €6 to to €18 per hour. Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) are much less fuel efficient than normal cars, and even electric SUVs aren’t a silver bullet, with their increased wight leading to higher generation of particulates from tyres and brakes. Combined with their increased size (cars are getting 1cm wider every two years in Europe driven by the rise in SUV sales), this reduces the road space available to walking and cycling. If you’d like to find out other reasons why SUVs are bad for cities, have a look at this excellent Not Just Bikes episode. Note however that the new tariff only applies to visitors of Paris, with local residents and professionals exempt.
And secondly a milestone: in April, bikes overtook cars as means of transport in Paris. A study found that Parisians use bicycles for 11.2 per cent of their trips inside the city centre compared with 4.3 per cent of journeys by car. This is pretty huge news for a number of reasons: not only does an increase in cycling help people move around cities more efficiently (see the GIF below), but it lowers air pollution and also reduces the carbon impact of a city.
So how did Paris’ Olympics fare on air quality and what’s in store for the Paralympics? As we covered in our Air Aware Labs article, many of the Olympic venues had levels of air pollution, particularly nitrogen dioxide, above World Health Organisation levels. This was due to many being built near to Paris’ ring road. With the Triathlon being postponed, and almost cancelled, due to poor water quality, we wonder how bad the air quality has to get to lead to such action.
Hexagonal particles
Back to our rather idyllic end of France. We’ve been tracking our air quality on our runs using AirTrack, and it’s pretty good overall. Apparently Nantes has the best air quality in France but overall being further South is going to be better for you.
In other news
Louise’s bid for fame is one step closer. This week she appeared in the Tech Talks podcast talking about Air Aware Labs and her journey into the world of air quality. It’s available on all your favourite podcast platforms (Spotify, YouTube, Apple). Please listen and leave a comment!