Stop idling engines: ‘It is urgent that signs are posted by the schools’ 

• WHEN I or my wife ask drivers whose engines are idling to turn them off most do so.

But this week one did not, even though I asked him amiably, explaining that there are nine schools nearby (Eleanor Palmer, Brookfield, Gospel Oak, primary schools and four secondary schools – William Ellis, Parliament Hill, Sainte Union and Acland Burghley, as well as two private schools, Highgate and Channing) and that the constituents of car exhaust damage us all, especially children.

I realise government is starving local authorities of money so that it may be beyond the budget to put up warning signs all over Camden, but it is urgent that signs are posted by the schools I have listed.

I’ve also written to the heads asking them to encourage pupils to make and post signs. These signs ought to encourage parents not to drive their children to school as well as not to idle their engines.

Fifty years ago I was involved in a campaign to remove the anti-knocking agent TEL (Tetraethyllead) from petrol. We found high levels of lead in pupils at William Ellis which lies beside the busy West Highgate Hill.

Lead damages development of growing nervous tissue, brains. It takes a long time for people to realise that whatever you put into a car comes out in one way or another and that the constituents of car exhausts are poisonous.

DR MARTIN ROSENDAAL
NW5