Here in the UK, the arrival of summer is usually heralded by the tinkle of Colonel Bogey March as the ice cream vans fire up for their peak season rounds, but a new investigation has found that they’re spouting out dangerously high levels of pollutants.
Reporters from the Mail on Sunday tested ice cream vans around the country for harmful emissions and found that some are emitting more than 40 times the recommended limit of black carbon.
Commonly known as soot, black carbon is particularly dangerous to the health of babies and children, and has been linked to cancer, dementia amd defects in the growth of children’s lungs.
Due to the fact that ice cream vans typically leave their engines running in order to provide power for their fridges, queuing families are being exposed to potentially dangerous levels of the pollutant.
The World Health Organisation recommends that black carbon concentrations should reach no higher than 10 micrograms per cubic metre of air, though many vans were found to be emitting amounts far beyond that limit.
Six times the amount of black carbon as a busy London street
Two vans in particular were found to be pumping out emissions equivalent to six times the amount of black carbon that would be typically found on a busy day in London’s Oxford Street, the paper claims.
It’s worth noting that the worst offending vans mentioned in the investigation were all much older models, though the paper states that one newer van was still found to have unacceptably high black carbon emissions.
Experts say that black carbon can be so toxic that even a few minutes’ exposure could be enough to trigger asthma attacks or cause serious problems for people with other existing breathing problems.
Professor Jonathan Grigg, head of paediatric respiratory medicine at Queen Mary University of London, said: “Certainly, in the case of a child with asthma there is a risk that exposure to black carbon at the levels you have recorded could bring on an attack.
“Any idling diesel vehicle will produce high concentrations of sooty particles that, when inhaled over long periods, will cause health effects in children – such as reduced lung function and increased risk of developing asthma.”
