Walking to school in England – Inbal Marilli, UnsplashLondon has the largest ultra-low emissions zone in the world, and it’s causing children to walk or bike to school much more than their peers in other cities, a new study has shown.
In London, a charge of $16.00 is required to enter and exit the city in a car that isn’t low emissions or electric, but it wasn’t always so. 6 years ago, only certain parts of inner London were considered low emissions zones.
Researchers at Queen Mary’s and Cambridge universities saw that the zone was going to be extended to encompass the whole of metropolitan London, and wanted to take the opportunity to study how this change would affect the health of children.
The study was launched in 2018 and measured inner London and Luton, a smaller city to the north. Children between the ages of 6 and 9 were given questionnaires about their habits, and were also occasionally examined for their pulmonary health, with researchers expecting that the drop in emissions would lead to better lung development.
Several papers will be published on the collected dataset, and the first one has shown that because of the reduced traffic congestion in the London ultra-low emissions zone, children are more likely to walk, bike, or ride a scooter to school.
2 out of every 5 London students in the study had switched from “passive” to “active” forms of getting to school—in other words, 2 out of every 5 London students used to be driven to school, but are now walking, biking, or riding a scooter.
This was more than in Luton, where only 1 in 5 had switched to biking or walking during the study period.
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“Physical activity in general is vital for preventing obesity,” said Christina Xiao, an epidemiologist affiliated with Cambridge University and lead author of the paper. “There’s strong evidence that shows that it prevents weight gain, and also has benefits in terms of children’s physical development and mental health as well.”
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The study was limited in that it didn’t examine why the switch had been made. Was it because there was less traffic and so parents felt more comfortable navigating streets with their kids, or because it actually cost money for parents to drive their kids to school?
The authors of the first study hope that such details, along with the effect of less air pollution, will be parsed out in future studies.
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There are 300 or so low emissions zones across Europe where, in general, walking and biking are more common ways to get around, but no such legislative emissions zone exists in the US.
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