Cyclists to become mobile pollution sensors

Cough, hack, cough, splutter! A team of - cough - researchers from Imperial College London - wheeze, cough - is carrying out a programme which will see - hack, cough, cough - pedestrians and cyclists equipped with sensor units to monitor urban air pollution. Cough.

Motor vehicles contribute a large percentage of the air pollution found in urban environments.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

Excuse me one moment, just finding my inhaler, wheeze. Scientists, environmentalists and those with respiratory complaints - cough, cough - have become highly concerned about PM10 particles (sooty specks smaller than 10μm found in traffic exhaust fumes) which have been linked to cases of asthma, heart disease and a number of other ailments. Though not as well known - hack, cough, pant - as carbon monoxide and other compounds associated with internal combustion engines, PM10s are a very real worry. Wheeze.

New EU law dictates that the UK must cut down on nitrous dioxide pollution, a compound also found in exhaust fumes, cough."There is a lot that we do not know about air quality in our cities and towns because the current generation of large stationary sensors don't provide enough information," says Professor John Polak, the head of the scheme which is to be carried out in London, Cambridge, Gateshead and Leicester. The new sensors, which can measure - wheeze, hack, splutter - five different types of pollution, will enable scientists to more closely study localised air pollution - pant, cough, wheeze - in urban areas as well as to produce 3D "pollution cloud" models which will then allow experts to advise change if street planning - ie; the location of traffic signals - is causing a build-up of fumes in that area.

As a cyclist who - cough, wheeze - regularly rides in urban areas, Acid Rabbi would be pleased to offer his services to the team and would like to point out that, should they choose to take him up on the offer, they will be able to save money -cough, pant, hack - on the sensors and simply listen to his lungs right after he'd ridden any more than 100 metres. Wheeze.

Police brutality

Picture this scene: a peaceful protest, with a group made up of women and men of all ages. Two of the women - both mothers, one of a single-parent family - have cameras, because the police have been known to have taken a bit of a heavy-handed approach in the past. They are part of an organisation called FitWatch, which monitors police activity and films officers in order to have a record so that complaints can be made if police act in a way that may be unlawful.

Of which repressive and brutal police state is this a map?
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

When the people with the cameras arrive, the police immediately identify them as members of FitWatch. You can't help but get the impression that the officers consider them to be a nuisance, though none of them say as much. One of the women notices that one policeman isn't wearing the numbers on his shoulder which, by law, he and all officers must wear while on uniformed duty so that he or she can be accurately identified by a member of the public in case of a complaint. She approaches the officer and asks him to identify himself but he refuses, claiming wrongly that he does not have to give that information. The woman replies, saying that he does. At no time is she aggressive and what's more she's correct - when asked by a member of the public, a police officer must identify himself unless he or she is engaged in a plain-clothes operation. She asks her colleague to photograph the policeman. This is not illegal, but another officers blocks the camera.

But the policeman doesn't identify himself. Instead, he grabs her by the throat and she is roughly forced to the ground and arrested. The other woman is treated in the same way - one officer grasps her by a pressure point in her neck and drags her away. Somebody else - a police officer - is filming the incident with a video camera - the footage clearly shows that one officer has placed his full weight on the woman's ankle, which is painfully twisted on the ground. She asks him to step off her because he is hurting her - he denies that he is standing on her foot.

Both women are bundled into a police van and taken to a police station where they are charged with obstructing officers and refused bail. They are denied their right to speak to a solicitor and held for four days, three of them in prison, though all charges are later dropped.

Where do you think this happened? Iran? North Korea? Saudi Arabia?

See the video here.

It's Kent, in southern England, where campaigners have been protesting at Kingsnorth Power Station, where two new coal-fired generator units are due to be installed, massively increasing the amount of pollution emitted by the facility - a proposal that has drawn widespread criticism from a number of environmental groups including Greenpeace, the WWF and the RSPB.

A complaint has been made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission who are now looking at this video. It is to be hoped that the officers involved will be identified, sacked and prosecuted - they have shown themselves to be aggressive, violent thugs and there is no place in an organisation that is supposed to protect the public for them.

FitWatch will doubtless be pleased to receive your support.