A study of the air quality of an area of Cheltenham very near to the town centre has found it to be better than you might expect.

In June, Duncan Mounsor joined up with St Luke’s resident Bharat Gupta to sample the air in the area during the morning rush hour.

The pair used Duncan’s company’s ‘smogmobile’ a mobile monitoring laboratory built into an electrically-powered Nissan enV200, which produces no emissions itself.

The substances they were looking for were, in particular, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM 10 which stand for ‘particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter- it’s very fine dust and particles which can do particular damage to human lungs, and for the very smallest particles can get into the bloodstream. And the good news for residents in areas around St Luke’s, London Road, College Road and Bath Road is that these every damaging substances are present in relatively low levels, according to the monitoring.

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