Radarspotting

A third runway at Heathrow would lead to significantly more early deaths from pollution than a new airport built in the Thames Estuary, a study warns.

The research, funded by US university MIT, suggests Heathrow pollution causes about 50 early deaths a year and this figure is rising sharply.

That figure would climb to 150 with a third runway, the study estimates.

If Heathrow closed and an airport was built in the Thames Estuary, there would be 50 deaths annually, it said.

BBC technology reporter Theo Leggett said the reasoning was that pollution from Heathrow was frequently blown over densely-populated areas, whereas a large proportion of emissions from an estuary airport would be carried out to sea.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19934804

Quote from: mhm on October 13, 2012, 09:41:02 AM
BBC technology reporter Theo Leggett said the reasoning was that pollution from Heathrow was frequently blown over densely-populated areas, whereas a large proportion of emissions from an estuary airport would be carried out to sea.

He doesn't know much about diurnal winds on shorelines and the microenvironments in places like the Isle of Thanet, which I learned about in flying school in the 60's.

And just how do you attribute just 50 deaths a year to aircraft pollution from Heathrow, as opposed to smoking or pollution from other traffic?

Having spent over 30 years of my life up close and personal with gas turbine engines I should, by rights, at 74, be a wheezing wreck, but I have no respiratory problems whatsoever. I almost forgot to mention the six years I spent at the Twickenham Campus of Brunel University where the air was heavy with the perufume of burnt Jet A-1 from airliners on the approach to Heathrow.