Euston please, and go easy on the ultrafine particles

Submitted by jamiewallace on January 15, 2006 - 18:24.

So that's official: jump in a cab and you're exposing yourself to high levels of pollution.

The BBC has reported that a team at Imperial College London have found that taxi travel results in more exposure to pollutants than travelling by car or bus, riding a bike, or walking.

Examine the figures a bit more closely, however, and you find out it's a little more complex than this.

On average, individuals were exposed to the following ultrafine particles counts per cubic centimetre:

Taxi - over 100,000
Bus - just under 100,000
Car - 40,000
Cycling - around 80,000
Walking - just under 50,000

So what do we make of this? You're twice as safe driving than biking? You're twice as safe walking than cabbing it? Come again?

There's a risk that these sorts of studies leave us even more confused than before. Not least when you consider that another Imperial study found that if you were walking along Marylebone Road you should walk on the inside (and not the edge) of the pavement to minimise exposure to PM10s, and that one side of the road was worse than the other, but when it came to carbon monoxide, it didn't really matter where you walked.

I hope that's clear.

Surely what we all crave at the end of the day is to be told that if we're going about our business by car, taxi, bike, bus, on foot or by bloody pogo stick, we're not being exposed to dangerous pollutants. Telling me that if I go by bus rather than taxi I'll be breathing in a couple of thousand fewer nanoparticles is not entirely helpful.