We gave a brief hint last week of the second amazing Clean Air Day event that Louise attended: a Clean Air For The Ends poetry event at Theatre Peckham organised by Brixton-based Poetic Unity.
As they say on their website: “a recent study has shown that Black residents are being exposed to more levels of illegal air pollution than any other ethnic group in some of the UK’s major cities which highlights the racial injustice when it comes to air quality. Poetic Unity’s new campaign ‘Clean Air For The Ends’ promotes alternative travel such as riding bikes and roller skating for young Black and marginalised people from the ends.”
We have written about inequality and air pollution before. The evidence continues, with recent reports such as this one from Imperial College London and this study in the Lancet with a Dutch population. The latter found that 3–44% higher exposures to nitrogen dioxide and 1–9% higher exposures to fine particulate matter in minority groups compared with the ethnic Dutch group.
Data talks but so do words. And none better than those of the poet Blaize Alexis-Anglin who fronted the Poetic Unity campaign. Don’t miss the video with his call for young people to choose active travel. Hard to pick from the lines but this one was particularly memorable: “look I understand that it's not everyone's priority but please remember this problem mainly affects school children from the global majority”.
Active travel choices was the topic of the national Clean Air Day campaign. Global Action Plan have updated that 3000 have now signed the petition (including Fergal Sharkey apparently). It will continue to run, so it’s not too late to sign over the next few weeks!
Our very own Get Out The Vote campaign!
Another vote is on our minds!.. The voting for the BeLambeth awards, for which Air Aware Labs is short-listed in the Climate Action: Sustainable Impact category. Please spare a moment to give us your vote!
Finally, Sacha’s been out to the ultimate birth place of Air Aware (after a difficult gestation, which our readers will remember). He accompanied a PhD researcher looking at campaigning and activism on air quality to see our Brixton monitoring node. Spot the t-shirt below the dramatic sky?