Worst areas of Brum revealed for toxic air

FIGURES GIVE BREAKDOWN OF SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN SUFFERING IN CITY

- STEPHANIE BALLOO News Reporter

THE worst areas in Birmingham for air pollution can now be revealed - including a constituency where 16,000 children are breathing in highly toxic air.

New data by Health Equals, a campaigning coalition of organisations, show a breakdown of the areas, schools and children suffering across Birmingham.

Categorised by constituencies, the data shows Ladywood as the area with the largest number of schoolchildren in toxic environments.

It comes as it emerged all 506 schools in Birmingham are in areas which failed the World Health Organisation’s air quality guidelines - meaning 293,561 city children in those schools are at risk of serious, long-term health problems, including heart disease and stroke.

A total of 22,571 children are attending 58 schools in very high pollution areas with double the WHO standards.

Alarmingly, 15,783 of those children - 70% - are at schools in the Ladywood constituency, which covers Alum Rock, Nechells, Newtown and more.

More than half of the schools in Ladywood qualify as being in ‘very high pollution’ environments, with double the WHO guidelines of toxins in the air.

Thousands more children in Perry Barr and Erdington, also hotspots for pollution, are breathing the worst quality air, according to the new data.

Hodge Hill and Solihull North also had a school within a very high pollution area, with hundreds of children affected.

The remaining constituencies had no schools in the ‘very high’ category.

A breakdown of the wider constituencies in Birmingham - in which all schools failed WHO guidelines - can be seen below:

➤ Birmingham as a city

Number of schools with air pollution breaching WHO standard: 506

Number of children in schools breaching guidelines: 293,561

Number of schools with very high pollution - double the guidelines: 58