• BOB Davenport refers to our “toxic streets” (No choke, November 9).

Tenants living directly in front of the “rat-run”, 24-hour busy Adelaide Road can report (alongside factual reports by environmental health agencies) that the increase in traffic, heavy diesel vehicles, redevelopment of private homes, at the Marriott Hotel end of the Adelaide Road, is a daily nightmare of breathing in toxic fumes.

This pollution, air and noise, is a constant “life-quality-reducing miasma” that should cause the local authorities to close the playground in front of Burnham and redirect children, many from the school across the road, to the numerous other playgrounds on Fellows Road, at Taplow, Bray, Winchester Road (near the sports centre) and at Primrose Hill, even Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill.

Tenants at Burnham wake up coughing out dirt particles, the net curtains on the Adelaide Road side are constantly grey and dirty.

No child should be exposed to the highly toxic fumes on this road and around Swiss Cottage as reported by London Air Watch pollution agency last year, as being as polluted as this toxic dust and fumes on the Marylebone High Road, which is considered one of the most polluted in Europe.

Evidence of how polluted the ground in the front of Burnham is seen in the few trees at the entrance that are slowly dying and nothing planted survives. No wildlife or biodiversity survives any longer.

And, because of constant 24-hour traffic, leaf blowers and building works, birds don’t know if it’s day or night and, unlike 18 years ago, no birds nests in the few trees left.

Toxic fumes on Adelaide Road are slowing destroying tenants’ health and children are at even more risk.

If Camden is desperate for “space” it should close off the Burnham playground and use it for other purposes, where small children who shout and scream are not inhaling toxic fumes detrimental to their health when there are numerous, safer playgrounds in the area.

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