Name: Going underground: how commuting is bad for your health | FT
Uploaded: 2020-03-08T00:12:13.000Z
Duration: 5 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So we're here to talk about air pollution on the London

with this amazing tray to measure the air quality.

to more than 100 stations in Zone 1 of central London

These are two different types of air pollution sensors.

So we focused on PM2.5, which is about a 30th of the width

And PM2.5 is so small that it can pass through your lungs

And it's linked to all types of inflammation, heart disease,

Let's go down and see what the readings are like underground.

So do you notice a personal difference in your own health

So tell me where you took these measurements.

So I went to every station within this yellow circle

What I found was that this red line, the Central line,

The light blue one, the Victoria, was also pretty bad.

And these black bits, which are the Northern line,

make a big difference to the quality of the air?

The tunnels that are very old and very deep

weren't built with very many ventilation shafts.

The tunnels that were actually the first that were built

They were the first trains in the underground.

And so they actually did have quite a lot of ventilation

because the smoke from the train had to escape.

And there's two types of tunnels in the Underground system.

And those are the lines, like the Northern line, the Victoria

line, that are up to 50 metres underground.

Then there are also the cut-and-cover lines.

It's things like Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith & City.

Right now, it's fluctuating around about 80.

So does it get worse as the train comes by?

It tends to get worse because all the dust and dirt

from the tunnel gets brought into the station.

So what do we think is in the air that is contributing

And that's because the friction of the wheels on the rails

and the brakes on the wheels splinters off

But then there are also things like skin cells,

little bits of hair, bits of fibre from people's clothing.

I don't know if that's because we're near an open window,

are consistently three or four times that level.

So what did TFL say when you told them about your findings?

TFL say that they think the air underground is safe.

It fits within the UK's health and safety guidelines,

there's a problem in terms of the cleanliness underground.

to see what these cleaning operations look like.

We went with one of their cleaning teams.

And they work between about midnight and 5 in the morning.

when the electricity is turned off, cleaning up the dust,

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Going underground: how commuting is bad for your health | FT

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