Thursday 15 July 2010

50,000 people a year are dying prematurely due to poor air quality

Did you know that as many as 50,000 people a year are dying prematurely due to poor air quality? That’s more than 20 times the number that die in road accidents in the UK each year! Whilst other factors are to blame, road transport is the worst offender at putting ‘nasties’ (NOx, Hydrocarbons and Particulates) into the air.

Pollutants like these can cause asthma, skin and eye irritation, poor lung development, heart disease, cancer and lung disease. All of these could be cutting people's lives short by as much as nine years.

Volvo Cars UK wants to do something about it, and this is how:

They are developing an iPhone app, which will let you search a vehicle’s make and model, and delivers easy-to-understand information that clearly illustrates the Nasties coming from the exhaust pipe of the car you drive, or are thinking of buying.
They want to launch an environmental label (just like the one you see on cars and fridges now) that will be used alongside the CO2 label displayed in new and used car showrooms. The label, like the app, will tell you just how many Nasties are emitted by a particular car's exhaust.

They are also setting up the Emissions Equality Think Tank, which will help keep people talking about air quality so governments and decision-makers take notice and do something about cleaning up our air.

To support the campaign they have developed a great animation which helps explain the issues in an easily to understand way. You can watch the video here

http://www.volvocars.com/uk/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.facebook.com/#!/insidevolvouk?ref=ts.

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