Why Londoners Should Be Way More Outraged About Air Pollution

People just aren’t being vocal enough about pollution in London. That message comes not from a fringe environmental group but from the city’s own Deputy Mayor for Transport, Isabel Dedring. During an interview at The Atlantic’s CityLab 2015 summit in London Monday, Dedring cited statistics that suggested an alarming rate of pollution-related premature death in the city—a rate that nonetheless had not yet fully mobilized public outrage.

“Everybody should get a lot more exercised about air pollution than they do, because it does have very obvious and immediate health impacts. We did a study showing 4,300 people in London are dying prematurely because of air pollution. Now the level is probably three times higher than that because of other materials we hadn’t taken into account.”