Country Life's rural columnist Agromenes looks at the huge improvements being made to the air that we breathe, through the unlikeliest of ways.
Some good news for a change — and news that is particularly good for the countryside. Last week, the Met Office released its survey of air pollution, which shows that, on all counts, the air in the UK is becoming less dirty and that people in rural areas are particularly benefiting from these improvements. Countrymen have long celebrated our fresh air and the better life expectation that it ensures. However, more widely, and particularly in the knee-jerk reactions to the extension of London’s ULEZ, urban people have lost sight of the real damage done by air pollution. It costs the NHS £20 billion a year and is responsible for more than 28,000 premature deaths. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens live lives burdened by accentuated asthma and other respiratory diseases.
This is not a new problem. The older among us will remember the days when thick fog filled with sulphur fumes closed Britain down for days on end. Schoolchildren may have been pleased because they got time off school, but, for the rest of the population, the filth that disfigured their buildings and coated their lungs was a hated yet accepted part of life.
It was left to a Conservative government to take the remarkable decision to stop people burning coal in their grates. The Englishman’s home may be his castle, but it was no longer going to be safe from the diktats of the State. For a Tory administration that had campaigned in two elections with the slogan ‘Set the people free’, to take so invasive a step was remarkable. However, the 1956 Clean Air Act was forced upon ministers by their own backbenchers, determined that the Great Smog of 1952 would never be repeated.
“The industry must unite, face down the conspiracy theorists and insist that we stick with the science”
Ever since, the legislation has been incrementally strengthened, but the growth in road traffic and the pollution from petrol and diesel vehicles has meant that air pollution has remained the largest environmental risk to UK public health. Now, cleaner engines and more effective catalysts have improved the position and this latest Met Office report shows that urban air quality has been steadily improving. In addition, the measures being taken to combat climate change will contribute to cleaner air. The move to electric vehicles will be a fundamental improvement, although that change will take a very long time unless the Government encourages the scrapping of old cars and commercial vehicles.
In the countryside, much of the pollution has been caused by agriculture — in particular through chemical fertilisers and the methane produced by large numbers of cows and sheep. However, recent changes — notably the reduction in animal numbers and the growth of regenerative farming — that use far fewer chemicals has begun to mean much cleaner air in rural areas.
This advance could be furthered by the introduction of innovative feeding techniques to cut the methane that cows emit. The big dairy company Arla has been a pioneer in these exciting developments, which could reduce bovine methane by up to 27%. However, the company is now beset by social-media misinformation. Although the Food Standards Agency and the European Food Safety Authority have given full clearance for the use of Bovaer (the additive that inhibits the production of methane), conspiracy theorists and climate-change deniers have been busy using the internet to undermine these efforts.
Sadly, some of Arla’s competitors have tried to make capital out of these falsehoods, instead of recognising that this is the kind of innovation needed if we want both milk and clean air. The industry must unite, face down the conspiracy theorists and insist that we stick with the science.
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