- Title: Filters clean the air in London railway station
- Date: 8th November 2018
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (OCTOBER 30, 2018) (REUTERS) PEOPLE WALKING AWAY FROM A TRAIN AT MARYLEBONE RAILWAY STATION PEOPLE WALKING PAST THE DEPARTURES BOARD AT THE STATION INFORMATION ON THE DEPARTURES BOARD MAN WALKING PAST AN AIR FILTER INSIDE AN ADVERTISING UNIT ADVERT FOR BNP PARIBAS SAYING (English): "HOLD YOUR BREATH / NOT LONG NOW" AIR FILTER / AIRLABS STAFF MONITORING AIR QUALITY
- Embargoed: 22nd November 2018 12:00
- Keywords: Air quality pollution Marylebone Railway Stations nano-carbon air filters Sophie Power Airlabs David Heathfield Chiltern Trains
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Pollution,Environment
- Reuters ID: LVA00195N8PY3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:The quality of air at one of London's most polluted railway stations is getting a boost from a series of filters installed to try to tackle the problem.
Marylebone Station has installed air filters in four advertising billboards on the station concourse, cleaning the air for passengers and staff alike.
The nano-carbon filters will remove 95 percent of gas pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in the air, according to their developers.
"What's really important is the airflow engineering we've done," Sophie Power, co-founder of filter maker Airlabs, told Reuters.
"We're combining the clean air coming out of these four zones and directing it, combining it with the natural airflow through this station, to create the largest clean air zone we can to impact the most people waiting for their train," Power said.
Airlabs said its air quality readings inside Marylebone station were typically twice those of the road outside the station, one of the most polluted streets in London, because of the combination of traffic emissions outside the station and diesel trains inside.
"Chiltern Railways is a diesel railway and we're becoming increasingly aware, as I think people are across the country and across London, of air quality issues. This is just one of the things that we're looking to do to address that problem," said David Heathfield, Chiltern Trains manager at Marylebone.
The World Health Organisation says 4.2 million people were killed in 2016 by exposure to small particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less.
In London air pollution reached the legal limit for the whole of 2018 less than a month into the year.
"It's the air we breath in that matters to our health. It's not what we measure at a monitoring station," Power said.
"You're exposed at home from your cooking and your boilers, in your workplace and on your commute and to really improve the quality of our health we need to focus on the air we are breathing in, not the air that is measured by the side of a road."
Chiltern Railways said it's planning to test a hybrid-battery train that uses battery power in populated areas to improve the air quality. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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