Doctor claims pollution in Britain is not an ‘emergency’
April 17, 2017
London mayor Sadiq Khan stressed in December, last year, that pollution levels in the city were alarming, and termed it a public health emergency, quoting an estimate of 9,000 deaths each year. Yet, a British general practitioner (GP) has refuted this claim.
Michael Fitzpatrick, a GP and medical author, asserted on Monday that this number is unlikely, considering that 4,000 people died in the Great Smog in 1952. He also underscored that 40,000-60,000 death per year in Britain overall does not seem to be possible either.
Fitzpatrick then went on to prove that these numbers are just estimates produced by mathematic computations. “The figures are derived from calculations of the ‘years of life’ lost across the whole population resulting from the increased risks associated with particular pollutants,” he wrote in The Telegraph.
The author also commented on how the nature of pollution has changed, with “soot and sulphur oxides” being the primary toxic elements in the 50s and 60s, and “particulates and nitrogen oxides” present in the air today.
Moreover, these particulates and nitrogen oxides have also been on a consistent decline, the doctor wrote, adding that “they are now about a quarter of what they were in 1970”.
It looks like the statistic has become something akin to the Lernaean Hydra – or as the author citing respiratory physician Anthony Frew called it “zombie statistic” – because no matter how much it is discredited, it keeps popping up.
