Air Quality Monitoring in Shippon

VWHDC have agreed to monitor the air quality in Shippon. Tim Williams, VWHDC Environmental Health Officer, has told us:

“Air quality away from heavily trafficked roads is generally very good throughout the district, however I am aware that Barrow Road and Faringdon Road can be busy at times and Barrow Road can suffer with congestion at the junction with Faringdon Road particularly during the morning peaks. In addition as there is development planned for the area and it would be useful to gather some baseline air quality data of the existing air quality.
We use diffusion tubes to monitor levels of nitrogen dioxide a pollutant associated with traffic and combustion processes. I plan to locate one tube on a telegraph pole on Faringdon Road by the bus stop opposite the junction with Barrow Road and another tube on a telegraph pole on Barrow Road east of the junction with Elm Tree Walk.
I am also considering a background location away from traffic and I am considering Whitehouse Close. I intend to choose a suitable location for background monitoring when I go out to expose the diffusion tubes in early February 2021.
The tubes are exposed for a month then changed over and the exposed tubes are sent for analysis and results tend to take about a month to filter through. I would not expect to have any results until April. The parameter we assess against is the annual mean (Jan-Dec) and I would not be able to calculate this until about February next year (2022) when I have had receipt of the monitoring results from the December 2021 exposure.”