More than 90% of girls and boys breathe contaminated air daily, putting their health and well-being at risk.
More than 90% of girls and boys breathe contaminated air daily, putting their health and well-being at risk.- Schools, families and groups will mobilize next Friday, October 27, to demand “open streets for children” in various European cities.
- Ecologists in Action joins the Streets For Kids campaign that is mobilized for the second time this year in Spain and which has as a reference the actions of the School Revolt and the children's bikes.
In an urgent call to action, the Clean Cities platform – of which Ecologistas en Acción is a part – encourages mobilizing families, teachers, girls and boys across Europe to make a joint effort to guarantee a healthier future for children. Clean Cities warns that “more than 90 % of girls and boys around the world, including in Spain, breathe polluted air daily, with devastating effects on their health and well-being.”
Traffic pollution in Europe has been shown to be a direct cause of childhood asthma, with 33% of cases attributed to this pollution source. In addition, it increases the risk of suffering from this condition by 45 %. For the Clean Cities campaign, it is alarming that a significant portion of this exposure to toxic air occurs on the way to and from school.
Ecologists in Action has analyzed pollution in 160 schools in six cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Murcia, Vigo and Xixón), and practically all of them exceed the WHO recommendations:
— Only one of the 160 schools analyzed would comply with the WHO indications of not exceeding 10 µg/m3 on average.
— Seven out of eight schools, 87 %, would be above 20 µg/m3, the limit proposed by the European Commission in the revision of the Air Quality Directive, currently under debate.
— A third of the schools analyzed (58 of the 160, 36 %) would be above 40 µg/m3, the legal limit currently in force.
On the other hand, the Catalan Society of Pediatrics has recently made public the decalogue for safe and healthy environments, the first point of which calls for “pacifying school environments, prioritizing pedestrianization and the restriction of motorized traffic.”
In March 2022, the Congress of Deputies itself approved a non-legal proposal in which city councils and the Government were urged to implement effective measures to reduce pollution in school environments, such as limiting parking and traffic on the surrounding streets.
Some of the actions carried out in this regard in recent months are at risk, or have been reversed. This is the case of the removal of bollards in schools in Xixón, the return of cars to the doors of schools in Madrid, or the threats to eliminate the pacification of Poble-Sec, in Barcelona.
To stop these steps backwards and continue moving forward in improving children's health, next Friday, October 27, families, teachers, girls and boys from all over Europe will mobilize within the framework of the Open Streets for Children – Streets for Kids campaign. This European outreach effort will include notable actions in Spain, Poland and Italy and other events in the United Kingdom throughout the week.
This will be the second Streets for Kids mobilization this year in Spain, after more than 100 actions were carried out in May. The Streets for Kids campaign, which in turn is promoted by Clean Cities—a European platform of social, environmental, union, neighborhood and scientific organizations—has as reference the actions of the School Revolt, the bike buses that periodically demonstrate that it is possible to go to school without contaminating, and hundreds of actions promoted by local associations in all cities that claim that children's health should be a priority for municipal policy.
The organizing organizations urge all citizens to join this vital cause for the future of childhood: “We encourage families to make use of active mobility, taking their daughters and sons to school on foot, by bicycle or by public transport. public, promoting a healthier environment for everyone.”
Link with the actions of the Street For Kids campaign throughout Europe.
