Which are the UK’s most polluted cities?

Britain is one of the most congested countries in the world, with some studies suggesting that the average British motorist spends over 200 days of their life in traffic jams. London is the worst city, with around 35 per cent of the capital’s roads regularly congested according to the satnav company TomTom. Other cities with high levels of traffic congestion include Edinburgh, Manchester, Bradford, Oxford and Birmingham.

 

It isn’t just the frustration and inefficiency caused by traffic congestion that is a concern. Traffic pollution is believed to be responsible for a growing number of new cases of asthma in children. A report in the Guardian also claims that poor air quality is the cause of more than 4,000 deaths in London each year. So bad is the pollution in our capital that the EU is threatening to impose fines for failure to meet legal limits.

 

With a growing UK population density it is clear that we cannot continue to fill our roads with increasing volumes of traffic. This simply isn’t sustainable in the long-term and it poses a growing problem to our health, particularly children who live in the most polluted cities.