The pupils and staff at Wimbledon High take an active role in increasing sustainable travel, reducing congestion and improving air quality around Wimbledon High School. As part of this we hold the TfL STARS Travel Plan at Gold level and take part in numerous activities such as walk to school week and an anti-idling campaign.
We were therefore very keen to take part in the #UCLChemAirPoll project where a team of chemistry undergraduates from UCL visit year 5 to carry out an air quality investigation together. We wanted to find out about the air quality around our school and more about the seriousness of this issue. The UCL students visited us to talk to the year 5 pupils about air pollution, where it comes from and the problems that it can cause. The pupils then decided where they thought we should take air pollution readings and our wonderful team of chemistry undergraduates put up a series of diffusion tubes in the locations the pupils chose. The diffusion tubes will be analysed by the UCL team after a month of being in place to give us an idea of the levels of nitrogen dioxide around our school. We will then be able to discuss with the UCL team the implications of our results and actions that we can all take to reduce air pollution in our area.
While we await the results, year 5 have been thinking about ways we can find out more to give us a really full picture of air quality in our area. If you would like to help gather data please do be on the look out for sycamore leaves and send us your results! More information about the UCL project can be found here and more information about OPAL’s air quality survey can be found can be found here.
