Flock of racing pigeons equipped with
pollution sensor and Twitter account take to the skies in bid to raise
awareness of capital’s illegally dirty air
Monday 14 March 2016 15.38 GMT
Last modified on Thursday 17 March 201612.26 GMT
They’ve been driven from Trafalgar square
for being a nuisance, derided as rats with wings and maligned as a risk to
public health.
But now pigeons could play a small part
in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems –
its illegal levels of air pollution blamed
for thousands of deaths a year.
On Monday, a flock of half a dozen racing
pigeons were set loose from a rooftop in Brick Lane by pigeon fancier, Brian
Woodhouse, with one strapped with a pollution sensor to its back and one with a
GPS tracker.
But while the 25g sensor records the
nitrogen dioxide produced by the city’s diesel cars, buses, and trucks and tweets it at anyone who asks for a reading,
its real purpose – and the use of the pigeons – is to raise awareness.
“Most of the time when we talk about
pollution people think about Beijing or other
places, but there are some days in the year when pollution was higher and more
toxic inLondon than Beijing, that’s the
reality.”
He said he was inspired by the use of
pigeons in the first and second world wars to deliver information and save
lives, but they were also a practical way of taking mobile air quality readings
and beating London’s congested roads. They fly relatively low, at 100-150ft,
and fast, at speeds up to 80mph.
