Image: Living wall at the Library of Birmingham (Elliott Brown)
Living walls should be constructed at schools in areas where air pollution is high to help safeguard children’s health.
That’s the call from the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, as two London schools try to raise funds to build living walls to limit dangerous pollution levels in their area.
St Mary’s Catholic School in Chiswick and another neighbouring school are trying to raise thousands of pounds in cash to construct walls that they hope will absorb pollutants.
Laurie Laybourn-Langton, director at UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, told Sky News: "It’s important that individuals, as well as the communities, businesses and schools in which they live and work, take measures to understand how air pollution impacts them and act to reduce their exposure, lowering the chance of harm.
"For schools, measures like living walls can help to improve the quality of air children breathe and therefore improve their health and well-being, enhance the look and feel of their environment and also educate them about air pollution and climate change."
He also called on the government to introduce new legislation to cut air pollution.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs said: "While air quality in the UK has improved significantly since 2010, we understand the risk it continues to pose to human health and realise more needs to be done.
"That’s why we have introduced a £3.5bn plan to reduce harmful emissions, published an ambitious Clean Air Strategy and will include air quality provisions in our forthcoming Environment Bill.
"We are also supporting local communities to deal with this issue through our Air Quality Grant scheme, which funds projects to tackle air pollution and reduce emissions affecting schools, businesses and residents."
