A month or so ago an email came around on one of the internal lists, it was asking for participants in a medical test, to look for pollution particles in blood before and after exposure to London traffic. I semi-often cycle to work, and the route I take takes me along the A13, so I was interested to see how much pollution I was inhaling on the journey. After a brief chat with the scientist running the investigation, I was accepted to be part of it.
The protocol for the investigation requires finger-prick blood samples immediately before and after the pollution exposure and again after an hour of resting in a ‘clean’ atmosphere. I also had to keep a pollution meter running for a few hours before I rode to work (to get a baseline exposure to compare with the before exposure blood sample) and to monitor my pollution exposure during and after my ride.
The pollution monitor shows a significant exposure to gunk in the atmosphere, tracking closely with when I’m cycling in traffic and on the cycle lane alongside the A13.
After the first set of results were collected, I did the same journey again, this time wearing a 3M™ Aura™ Particulate respirator, to see if that helps filter the pollution – I wore it and cycled on one of the warmer days in July, and found it not too difficult to wear while cycling, if it is shown to be useful, I’ll probably keep wearing this style mask or a similar one.
I can’t share the results of the investigation yet, as it’s still work in progress and unpublished, but I did prepare a blood smear slide myself, so I’ll finish up with a couple of images from that. One does seem to show dark material alongside the blood-cells.
When the results are published I’ll post a link here or a new article.
