Figures produced by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and published by the Office for National Statistics show that vegetation removed 1.4billion kilograms of air pollutants from the environment in 2015.
Currently five times more pollutants are emitted, by traffic fumes, burning fossil fuels, domestic heating systems and other sources. Even so the amount removed has had a positive health impact and generated savings for the NHS.
The figures are taken from the UK Natural Capital account, a survey of natural assets including soil, air, water and wildlife. It is intended as an audit of the ‘health’ of the UK's environment.
The survey also looks at the cultural value we put on nature, the extent of which is something that often gets ignored.
As a result of the pollutants removed from the air by trees, grasslands and other vegetation there were 7100 fewer heart and lung admissions to UK hospitals and 1900 fewer early deaths. This generated £1billion in avoided health costs.
Although vegetation, particularly trees, plays a significant role in removing pollutants from the air and generating health benefits as a result, it cannot be relied on to solve the problem entirely.
The benefits generated are not shared equally between the regions of the UK, the leafy South East fares best, whilst the four areas with the lowest levels of pollutants removed by vegetation are in London. Many other cities have widely varying levels of removal, with inner-city, often disadvantaged areas faring worst.
Despite their obviously key role in protecting the environment green spaces are something we frequently undervalue. This is down, perhaps, to a complacent belief that because they have always been there they always will be there.
In a world where business and government alike find it ever harder to value anything that can’t be quantified into pounds and pence to think that way is to subscribe to a massive false sense of security.
The threat is embodied in the comments made this week by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss that protection against development of greenbelt land or risk voters frustrated at not being able to buy a home of their own turning to Jeremy Corbyn.
What her comments lack in common sense they make up for in political calculation. Truss has cleverly yoked the aspiration of every shire Tory to have his or her own castle called home together with the fear that a Corbyn government will turn Britain into Venezuela by the first Whitsun after getting elected.
Two bites at the paranoid cherry, surely a winning combination? Not this time though since she has faced a vociferous backlash in her own backyard, turns out the one thing shire Tories value more than having a home of their own is the semi-mythical concept of the greenbelt girding our cities.
Out of a silly season controversy a dangerous seed has been sown, sweetly reasonable sounding developers have been able to go on television and say that the greenbelt is an illusion, backed up by some bizarre instances where that status has been applied to things like disused car-washes.
Thiers is the dangerous logic of ‘a little bit can’t do any harm’, building on the odd field here and there, maybe losing a little bit of woodland won’t do any real harm; will it? Until it does because what we had has been chipped away one little bit at a time until there is nothing left.
The ONS figures show that vegetation, even if it is just the weeds growing through the roof of a disused car-wash, does have a positive impact on our national health. Far from building on the greenbelt we need to be expanding it and finding ways of designing more green spaces into our towns and cities.
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