Government Struggles to Overcome Air Pollution Problem at Heathrow

Air pollution breaches round Heathrow

The government's 'White Paper', issued in Dec 2003, made it clear that it wanted a third runway at Heathrow. However, the government decided that it could not go ahead just yet, because it would fall foul of EU regulations on air pollution.

It is telling that only the threat of EU sanctions deterred the government from going ahead with Runway 3 straight away. Otherwise they would have been prepared to threaten the lives of thousands of citizens in West London. The UK's air quality strategy, promoted by this government, was carefully designed to ensure that it could not do anything about even the most polluting developments such as Runway 3.

In order to allow a third runway, the government needs to show that it can achieve air quality which is within the EU standards. To this end it carried out further studies on air pollution around Heathrow and and this was published in Feb 2004.

The report is pretty dense and hard to intepret, so Friends of the Earth has carried out an analysis and summary. Our conclusion is that even if a whole series of more optimistic assumptions are made and a number of radical schemes are implemented, it will not be possible to meet all the relevant standards and guidelines for air pollution.

There have been press reports about some of the radical options, for example putting the M4 in a tunnel or introducing a congestion charge on roads around Heathrow. However, the study considers more than just these. See below for an summary of our analysis.

• Some 26 different 'parameters' are varied together with varying dates and ATMs and these are applied to give 15 sensitivity tests. This makes it impossible to see the effect of any particular parameter and makes it hard to a get a real 'feel' of the results. This is a major shortcoming of the report.
• The thrust of the paper is to keep making more optimistic assumptions and introducing more radical proposals until the air pollution problem 'goes away'.
• The approach is an entirely 'legalistic' one. The only considerations are the EU mandatory limits. All other limits and guidelines - eg vegetation standards for NO2, ozone and original health-based standards for NOx - are ignored. NAQS, local Action Plans and the actual impacts on people and the environment are not considered.
• A range of far more optimistic assumptions than those used in SERAS have to made to get the air pollution levels to within EU limits. These need to be subject to careful scrutiny. This is particularly so for those which have been taken from BAA and BA responses, noting that these parties have an interest in air pollution estimates being as low as possible.
• There are a number of very radical policy options suggested to get the air pollution levels to within EU limits. These include:
  • £20 charge to access the airport by car
  • congestion charge around Heathrow
  • speed restrictions on the M4
  • limit volume of traffic on the M4
  • putting the M4 in a tunnel with 'scrubbers' to remove the NO2
  • Extend the southern runway 1 km eastwards
• Only if all the optimistic assumptions are made and all the radical policy options are adopted, does it look as if the air pollution will be brought within limits by around 2015.
• The later results for 2- and 3-runway scenarios can be very misleading. They could be construed as showing that adding a third runway would reduce the air pollution.

For a copy of our full analysis, contact us.

What happens next?

A joint study is being undertaken by the Department for Transport (DfT) and BAA, the owners of Heathrow, to to see what can be done about air pollution. The object is not to actually address the problem of air pollution and so improve the health of the people of west London. It is to see how the government and BAA can get away with building a new runway.

A study has been commissioned from the Aviation Environment Federation by a group of MPs in the vicinity of Heathrow. The report, called 'Emissions: Impossible' shows that it is almost inconceivable that an expanded Heathrow could meet EU (and UK) air pollution limits. contact us for more information or visit Aviation Environment Federation web site.

Links to other pages

• Runway 3 threat posponed
• Back to Heathrow introduction
• Back to air transport introduction