Total: 12 posts
Posts in: Research
Research into the health impacts of air pollution.
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Worried about as yet unknown, unseen long-term impacts
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My house has been wrecked and the people who are working for Berkley are unable to listen to me and also the other neighbours
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every evening, our bathroom drain lets off STRONG odour. It is awful! the smell spreads around the whole house - opening the windows is not even an option! daily use …
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Research
Ethics
Cactuses Never Die
Yousef Qandeel was not born in al-Dawayima. He arrived five years too late for that. But he carries the keys.
Three iron keys on a ring, dark with age and heavy in the hand. They open nothing now — the house they belonged to no longer exists. The village it stood in no longer exists. In its place, since 1955, sits an Israeli settlement.
Where Palestinian families once marked the boundaries of their homes by planting prickly pear cactus — sabr in Arabic, the same word as patience — the land has …
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
AI
Back to the Future
Great Scott. Ealing Council’s welcome guide for new residents was written in 2010. The DeLorean is still parked on their website. And they haven’t changed a word.
If you moved to Ealing recently, you may have been directed to the council’s Welcome Guide for New Residents.
Well, no, you probably weren’t. Unless you’re Ukrainian.
The welcome for the rest of you is sixteen years out of date.
It’s still live on the Ealing Council website, cheerfully promising …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Research
On the Bins Again
This is a follow-up to Bangarang! Pirate Pete and the Lost Bin Collections of Southall and Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-Tipping, which documented how fly-tipping in Ealing doubled the year weekly black bag collections were scrapped in 2016 — and remained at that high level ever since.
After those two articles, a commenter on a separate Facebook post promoting the launch of the “What Happened to Southall?” report questioned the focus on bin collections, among other things.
MW …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Community
Features
Research
Exposes
What Happened to Southall?
A substantial new report on Ealing Council’s record in Southall landed this week, and it deserves your attention.
What Happened to Southall? is published by Community Powered Reporting, a volunteer resident-led research group, and it covers waste, housing, asset disposal, health, democratic accountability and pension fund investments — with extensive sourcing from council documents, FOI responses, and public data.
I haven’t read every page yet, but what I have read is rigorous, …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-tipping
Two weeks ago, I reported on the results of my research into the fly-tipping epidemic that has hit Ealing, and Southall in particular.
In short, fly-tipping across the borough literally doubled from July 2016, immediately after Ealing Council reduced household waste collections from weekly to fortnightly.
It’s remained at that high level ever since, and residents report that it’s getting even worse in recent years.
The nature of these sudden and sustained increases strongly indicate …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Housing
Section 106 money: where did Southall’s “developer tax” go?
With council elections less than three months away, Ealing Council is busy using “Ealing Council’s magazine for residents” to promote news of Ealing Labour’s local “achievements” in an effort to persuade voters that, despite national Labour’s dismal regurgitation of failed and cruel Tory government austerity policies and shameless political scandals going right to the heart of the UK establishment, Peter Mason’s Ealing Labour are still “on your …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Exposes
Bangarang! Pirate Pete and the Lost Bin Collections of Southall
This is the shocking story of how for sixteen years Ealing Labour councillors talked rubbish about having to make “difficult choices” to cut services to save money, ignoring thousands of residents' protests, and in doing so created a massive mess that a decade later still costs millions to clean up every year and leaves children’s and disabled people’s lives unnecessarily poorer.
It’s a story about an ambitious New Labour leader - politically aligned with Tony Blair …
Investigations
Community
Research
Health
AI
Toxic Town - Have You Been Affected?
Last week I watched last year’s Toxic Town series on Netflix, and then the Horizon documentary from 2020 (available on DailyMotion).
For anyone unfamiliar with it, Toxic Town tells the story of families in Corby, Northamptonshire, who were exposed to toxic dust during the reclamation of the Corby steelworks in the 1980s and 1990s. Nineteen families had children born with limb differences or other serious health problems - at least one resulting in the death of a newborn baby.
Over time, …
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Research
Health
Personal
Pollution
COPD
Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own intervention after their repeated failures).
My GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.
I first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Ethics
Pollution
Naphthalene Poisoning Risk in People of African and Asian Heritage
Scientific and medical research shows that people of Asian and African ethnicity are genetically more susceptible to naphthalene poisoning via inhalation.
@PHE_London representative Robie Kamanyire falsely claimed this is from ingestion only.
youtube.com/embed/ZdTj-l3S…
@PHE_London 50% ingested, 50% inhaled vapours.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…
@PHE_London Roby Kamanyire has emailed the following response to my query. 
@PHE_London It beggars belief, his response. …
Environment
Community
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Pollution
The Health and Other Impacts of Southall Waterside on Southall & Hayes Residents
Questionnaire first distributed in September 2018.
Any other comments about the effect the Southall Waterside redevelopment has had on your health?
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Pollution
Health Risks of Exposure to Benzene
'Benzene evaporates easily, and most people can just detect its distinctive smell at concentrations between 2.5 and 5 parts per million (ppm) in air.' (hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg329.… [PDF])
aresok.org/npg/nioshdbs/c…
convertunits.com/molarmass/Benz…
#Benzene #Cancer #SouthallWaterside #Southall @berkeleygroupuk @EalingCouncil @EalingCustSer @pejmason @juliangbell @EnvAgencySE @PHE_London @kamnagpal
hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg329.…
- short term exposure to benzene in air may cause …