I see the Parliamentary vote in support of a third runway at Heathrow as proof positive that all the fuss from the political class over air pollution from cars, has having nothing whatsoever to do with truth, but everything to do with effectively banning private transport, and extracting ever-increasing tax revenue from the motorist.
I used to live in Hayes, about 3 to 4 miles from the main runway at Heathrow. When the wind was in the right direction, and coming from Heathrow, we could smell and taste the fumes from the aircraft; the fumes were of kerosene/paraffin. Our windows used to get covered with small droplets of light brown oil, such as kerosene/paraffin, so did our washing if it was hanging out to dry. Some mornings the smell of partially burned aircraft fuel was so bad that it would sting and burn the linings of the nose and throat.
I've smelled a lot of road traffic diesel and petrol fumes over my life, but I've never known traffic fumes to be anything like as bad as the aircraft fumes that came from Heathrow. Traffic fumes tend to be limited to relatively small areas close to roadside situations, but aircraft fumes from Heathrow were virtually impossible to escape from unless you travelled right out of Hayes and the surrounding area.
About twenty years ago we spent two weeks in the far north of Scotland in the vicinity of Cape Wrath. When the day came for us to return home we drove from the north of Scotland, leaving about 3 pm in the afternoon, arriving back in Hayes about 5 am the following morning. We travelled down the M6, then the M40. As we were passing through Buckinghamshire on the M40 we began to smell dirty air; the smell of dirty air became ever stronger the closer we came to Heathrow and Hayes. Arriving back in Hayes our nasal passages and throats quickly returned to the 'normally' congested state that we had become accustomed to over many years of living close to Heathrow. On our journey back from the clean air of the far north we had passed through Glasgow, through the Liverpool to Manchester road corridor, and we had driven around and over Birmingham, all areas where road traffic pollution would normally have been expected to be an issue, but it wasn't until we came into pollution range of Heathrow that we became very aware of dirty air.
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