Illegal pollution levels on road

IN the prelude to his 1987 book CHAOS: Making a New Science, James Gleick stirred up a ‘hornets nest’of controversy with his quote on the ‘Butterfly Effect.’

It was the much discussed notion that the beat of a butterfly’s wing in Beijing would be enough to change the weather in New York a month later.

Chaos theory advocated the science of interrelatedness, that all things, particularly nature in the form of fractals and weather patterns, were inextricably interlinked and dependent.

Many natural objects exhibit fractal properties, including landscapes, clouds, trees, organs, rivers etc, and many of the systems in which we live exhibit complex, chaotic behaviour. Chaos has itself also long been a wellestablished theory in the area of town planning as can be seen from the recent air pollution figures for the A58.

I use the term ‘chaos’ advisedly since council plans to add to already illegal levels of air pollution and make them even higher seems to my mind to be the product of a chaotic and illogical mindset currently dominating our local decision-making process.

On 4 April Greenpeace and The Guardian released a data map of ‘More than 1,000 nurseries across England are within 150m of a road breaching legal air pollution limits.’

The exclusive report modelled sections of the A58 approaching Sudden as having NO2 levels of 43.0 NO2 average annual mcg per m3. The legal upper limit is 40.

A number of Rochdale citizens have already strongly objected to the proposals to use the Royle Barn Road to store hazardous substances at Castleton.

These objections in many cases refer to the likelihood of increased lorry and vehicle use and the increase in dangerous vehicle emissions as a result.

This latest data from Greenpeace only last week confirms that there are already illegal levels of air pollution in at least one of the major arterial approach roads to the proposed site.

Equally, the report confirms that the objectors’ concerns about air pollution levels are correct and justified, This we should bear in mind before the proposal to use the site to store hazardous waste is approved.

Approving the site can, it ●●This image of Piethorne Reservoir at dusk was submitted by Dave Honeyman. Email your pictures to us at rochdaleobserver@menmedia. co.uk or upload them to flickr.com/groups/ rochdalepics is obvious, do nothing but increase the risk to human health from NO2 and airborne particulates given the certainty of increased volume of traffic delivering ‘hazardous waste’ to the proposed Tetrosyl site at Castleton.

Given the clear and obvious existing impact on human health, particularly to the health of children, Rochdale council should adopt the ‘precautionary principle towards risk management which states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking that action.’

The Council should as a result:

●●Call an immediate halt to the proposal to store hazardous waste until the levels of air pollution can be monitored, established and reduced to a safe & legal level;

●●Instigate immediate and independent Air Quality monitoring of the A58 on the grounds of there being a clear and obvious existing threat to public health. Andrew Wastling Drake Street