The Big Smoke

Southampton is one of the most polluted cities in the UK, Alice Cooke looks at what’s being done

- Alice Cooke

PERHAPS I’ve been living under a proverbial rock, but I wasn’t aware that Southampton is one of the most air polluted cities in the UK. Maybe it’s because it’s the biggest cruise port in Britain, or maybe it’s because there is no-one monitoring the levels (which, I now discover, came out in a BBC investigation back in March of last year).

Southampton City Council said at the time that the port contributes up to 23 percent of the air pollution in the city. And that isn’t particularly surprising – the city’s port welcomes thousands of ships a year, including some of the biggest cruise liners and container ships in the world. The vessels leave their engines running while docked to power their electrics – even though, mysteriously, elsewhere in the world the same ships use a shore-based electricity supply, virtually eliminating their emissions. (Why aren’t they doing this here?)

Around the same time as the BBC report emerged, The World Health Organisation (WHO) called Southampton one of the most polluted cities in the UK. How embarrassing!