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New boost for Heathrow expansion bid
Independent research shows a new runway at Heathrow will not break pollution laws.
Researchers put air-quality sensors around the airport to measure poisonous nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and used modelling techniques to predict future pollution levels.
Results of the study, seen by the BBC, shows it is road traffic that conducts the most NO2 pollution around the airport and, because road vehicles are becoming ‘cleaner’, the air around Heathrow wouldn’t brake EU limits by 2030 because the effects of more planes would be cancelled out by cleaner vehicles.
Professor Rod Jones, of the University of Cambridge, which took part in the study, told the BBC: "If there is the development of a third runway, we expect there to be a marginal increase in NO2 coming from the airport itself, but that would be against the background of reduced NO2 from other traffic."
The study is significant because it has been independently funded, with no links to the airport or government – apart from the fact that Heathrow assisted in placing the monitors around the airport and British Airways supplied some flight data.
It ws funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and alongside Cambridge, experts from the universities of Manchester and Hertfordshire, Imperial College London, CERC Limited and the National Physics lab where involved.
Concern over air quality is one of the key reasons given by opponents over expansion at Heathrow.
Ministers will decide within weeks whether to grant expansion at Heathrow or Gatwick, or both, with the current date for a decision within weeks.
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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