Frank Kelly on air pollution

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Long before most of us gave air pollution a second thought, Frank Kelly was studying the impact of toxic particles on our lungs. In a pioneering set of experiments on human volunteers in northern Sweden, he proved that pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides and particulates, are harmful to our health. And he is the driving force behind an air quality monitoring system in London that is the envy of the world. When in the late 1990s, the UK government was encouraging us all to buy diesel cars to help reduce our carbon emissions, he warned that while diesel engines might be less bad for the planet than petrol engines, they were more damaging to our health. Later Frank and his team provided evidence that the car manufacturers were not telling the truth about emissions from diesel vehicles. As the chair of the Government Medical Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution, he has worked tirelessly to try and move air pollution up the political agenda and worked closely with successive Mayors of London to improve air quality in the capital. Changing all the buses from diesel to hybrid or electric vehicles would make a huge difference, he says. But we will also need to get used to relying less on driving our cars to get us from A to B. Producer: Anna Buckley

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.2	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know I also know that comedy is really
0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:43.0	BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:48.0	Hello, my guest today has done everything he can to tackle a problem that it's not going to go away, air pollution.
0:56.0	Frank Kelly was one of the first scientists to prove that toxic particles in the air, put there
1:00.8	by cars, buses, trains, planes, power plants, factories can damage our lungs.
1:07.0	Long before most of us gave air pollution a second thought, he set up an extensive network of monitoring stations to measure air quality in London and develop
1:15.6	ways of modeling air pollution in the capital that have been adopted around the world.
1:20.3	When the UK government was encouraging us all to buy diesel cars to help reduce CO2 emissions,
1:25.8	he warned that emission from diesel engines would be worse for our lungs, but to no avail.
1:31.6	For the past 10 years, he's chaired the Government Committee on the
1:34.6	medical effects of air pollution and worked closely with transport for London to try
1:39.2	and improve air quality in the capital. Professor Frank Kelly from Imperial College London
1:43.3	welcome to the Life Scientific. Thank you Jim. Well Frank I don't know what the air is
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.