Bringing a breath of fresh air to the UK’s polluted cities

Featuring a sturdy leather head-strap and mask, two large tubes and a transparent backpack containing a small potted plant, designer Chih Chiu’s response to crowded, polluted cities is stark.

“My initial idea was to separate an individual from the public space,” he says.

Titled Voyage on the Planet and originally created by Chiu for his BA final project in China in 2013, the work is set to take to the streets in Space to Breathe, a two-day exhibition based at Somerset House, central London, that is hoping to propel the issue of air pollution and public health into the limelight.

Kitting out visitors with the apparatus and taking them on to the Strand, Chiu, now a joint student at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College, hopes the sight of the people donning the otherworldly masks will shake the city out of its complacency.

“When all of us are sharing this polluted air, but none of us has a reaction to it, we feel nothing [is] really seriously wrong,” he says. “But when people start to have a reaction to the polluted air, like wearing this [mask], we start to [pay] attention.”

It is time we did. Amid a growing crisis in cities around the world, air pollution in parts of London smashed through the annual limit in the first week of this year. And with poor air quality linked to dementia, heart attacks and strokes, it is taking its toll on public health.

“What people really struggle with is the dislocation in time,” says Ian Mudway, lecturer in respiratory toxicology from the environmental research group at King’s College London. “The exposures you have now could produce effects in 20, 30, 40 years’ time,” he adds, pointing out that air pollution is estimated to cause around 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK alone.

A collaboration between curators Shrinking Space, scientists from the environmental research group at King’s College London and Cape Farewell, an organisation that pioneers the use of art to promote cultural changes to tackle climate change, Space to Breathe is an energetic mix of art, science and entertainment.

Among the weekend’s highlights, which includes a DJ set by former Pulp frontman, Jarvis Cocker, visitors will be able to don virtual reality headsets to take a tour around the Strand with the project Energy Renaissance. A 360° video, the experience explores how the area could be transformed through interventions ranging from tree planting to urban wind turbines and zero-emission buses.

Taking the ideas further, the weekend will encompass a set of panel discussions, with representatives from the Greater London Authority, the British Lung Foundation and Tidal Lagoon Power, the company behind the mooted Swansea Bay project, to share their views on the air pollution crisis and how to tackle it while, perhaps more creatively, a pollution-removing bench designed by Airlabs will be exhibited on the river terrace.

Also on show is a specially commissioned installation by sound artist Wesley Goatley based on six months’ worth of air pollution data gathered by instruments in the area surrounding Somerset House. The aim, says Goatley, is to offer visitors an innovative way to explore pollution data, while pushing back against the perception that such figures and statistics are only for specialists.

Entitled Breathing Mephitic Air, the experience involves a 360° soundscape with three different components of air pollution – nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide and particles known as PM10s – depicted by different sounds. These sounds, the rush of traffic, a catalytic converter and the sound of a refinery are themselves linked through their relationship to a metal intricately involved in the problem of air pollution: platinum.

The sounds, notes Goatley, rise and fall in volume with the levels of the pollutant they represent, while the apparent direction of sound mimics the direction and speed of the wind when the data was recorded. “There is a very firm connection between what you hear and what the data says – you can kind of read the data through the sound,” he says, adding that the data is also depicted dynamically through a visual display.

But Space to Breathe is not only about raising awareness of air pollution: it’s also an attempt to put the public back in control. Scientists will be offering visitors the chance to try out some of the latest real-time pollution-monitoring technology, as well as revealing how web-based apps can be used to plan journeys and dodge pollution hotspots.

“We will get people not just to think about what the pollution is on the day, but to actually have a perception of what their long-term exposures are likely to be,” says Mudway. The hope, he adds, is that the experience will galvanise visitors into action, from the way they navigate cities to the cars they choose to drive, and even encourage them to lobby those in power for change.

Andy Franzkowiak, a creative producer of the exhibition from Shrinking Space, agrees. “Every single person can make a difference,” he says.

Space to Breathe takes place at Somerset House, London WC2, on 28 and 29 January

Bringing a breath of fresh air to the UK’s polluted cities

Atos contract comes to an end bringing considerably relief for campaigners

Demonstrators in Manchester gather outdoors the Atos centre to protest towards the French-owned business. Photograph: Steven Purcell/ Steven Purcell/Demotix/Corbis

As forecast, Atos Healthcare has left its controversial £100m-a-yr contract with the Division for Perform and Pensions to deliver the operate capability assessment, the notorious “match for work” test that for its several critics has grow to be a grim byword for out-sourced state incompetence and callousness.

There will be some relief among campaigners that Atos has quit but most understand that although the French-owned company could have been the lightning rod for public anger above disability benefit reform it was ministers and the state who the two brought in the test and created and enforced the norms and laws by which it is delivered.

Two queries arise: why, after many years of mounting concern about Atos’s efficiency and the accuracy and safety of the WCA has it taken so lengthy for matters to come to a head? And second: does Atos’s departure signal a want on the element of ministers to genuinely reform a approach that handful of outdoors of the DWP – whether campaigners, GPs, MPs, or benefit claimants – think about to be either humane or match for goal?

Ministers indulged in the usual political blame game on Thursday morning: the WCA was a undesirable contract inherited from Labour. But 1 of the earliest acts of this government, back in November 2010, was to extend the Atos contract for a additional five many years. It was Coalition ministers who made the decision on a large and fast expansion of the test, in May possibly 2011, to re-assess one.5m existing incapacity benefit claimants, despite obvious warnings from their personal skilled advisor, Professor Malcolm Harrington, that the rollout ought to be delayed right up until what he described as an “inhumane and mechanistic” test could be additional refined.

A long list of reviews, campaigns and inquiries more than the past 3 years testify to the terrible human consequences of that austerity-led dash to pull vulnerable individuals off incapacity benefit as a way of driving down welfare investing. In the publish-industrial functioning class communities the place incapacity advantage take up was highest the WCA became a kind of terror: for years, claimants had been advised they had been too sick to perform now they would be tested and if they failed, their currently slender weekly revenue would be cut by 30%. Not just did they face becoming pitched into deep poverty overnight but they would endure the stigma of currently being labelled a “scrounger”.

The widespread distress amongst claimants brought on by the re-evaluation of incapacity advantage was swiftly picked up in GPs surgeries, welfare tips bureaux and food banking institutions. Right after an attempted suicide in a Merseyside jobcentre, DWP staff were warned by officials to be “empathetic” in direction of folks impacted by the changes. Alarmingly, the WCA cropped up with regularity at coroner’s inquests, the place fear of imminent re-assessment, or depression brought on by currently being declared fit for perform, was more and more noted as a factor in the deaths of vulnerable folks.

There is no company proof that the WCA drives folks to consider their life but this week a report by the Psychological Welfare Commission for Scotland concluded that the check straight led a lady with a historical past of stress related depression to consider her own existence. She died significantly less than a month soon after an Atos assessor declared her match for perform, resulting in her £94.25 a week benefit cash flow getting minimize to £67.50. “There was not something else which we could identify that would lead us to think that there was any other aspect in her existence that resulted in her selection to finish her daily life,” stated the commission. The WCA, the commission concluded, was flawed. The DWP disagreed. It declared that its methods were “largely robust and proper.”

WCA appeals tribunals tell a diverse story. The WCA – dubbed by a single MP as a “crude pc check” – is notorious for delivering seemingly incomprehensible decisions. Tales of claimants with terminal cancer who are located match for work, for example, have grow to be a stock neighborhood newspaper story. There have been above 600,000 appeals towards fit-for-work decisions in latest years, clogging up tribunal courts and costing the taxpayer above £60m a yr. Nationally, 4 out of ten appealed selections do well. Where claimants have skilled representation this figure rockets. Oxfordshire Mind reported not too long ago that a startling 98% of WCA appeals taken up by its advisors on behalf of mentally-unwell customers had been effective.

Nevertheless it was not until relatively lately that Atos and the government dropped the fiction that all was properly. In January, Atos boss Joe Hemming informed a sceptical committee of MPs: “We have a genuine passion for delivering solutions to the citizen in a way that continues to satisfy the way the citizen needs to be served.” But tensions between government and Atos had come to a head final summertime. The DWP had raised issues about Atos’s efficiency for its element Atos was desperate to leave a contract that it regarded as both undeliverable and a public relations disaster.

The disability minister, Mike Penning, explained on Thursday morning that Atos will quit the WCA ahead of its contract ends in August 2015 (even though it will proceed to operate a separate WCA contract in Northern Ireland). The choice will not impact Atos’s other huge government welfare contract, to carry out the Individual Independence Payment assessments (although the National Audit Workplace has raised concerns that this contract also is working into critical problems). There are number of indications that the government sees the WCA issue as something other than a technical contracting concern. Outsourcing giants Serco and G4S are believed to be in the frame to substitute Atos.

Campaigners, on the other hand, think that Atos’s departure alone will consequence in minor materials alter to the WCA. No government is probably to abandon the principle of incapacity benefit re-evaluation but they will look for a root and branch assessment that make certain that the check gets to be far more sensitive and puts the person first, rather than welfare money financial savings. “The check must be more than an exercising in obtaining men and women off rewards,” said the Scope charity chief executive Richard Hawkes: “It need to make sure disabled individuals get the specialist, tailored and flexible help they need to have to locate and preserve a job.”

Atos contract comes to an end bringing considerably relief for campaigners

Bringing Nature to the Vitamin Shelf: What is a Stilbenoid

Several customers are mindful that berries and grapes are so-named “superfoods” that pack a large dietary punch into a quite small bundle. But few know a.) why berries and grapes are so very good for you b.) what the health benefits of berries are and c.) how a lot they would have to consume in purchase to unlock their full health advantages.

 We’ll tackle a. and b. very first given that the news about c. might come as a shock. Berries and grapes are excellent for you in component since they have chemical compounds referred to as stilbenoids that belong to a class of compounds named phytoalexins, which are naturally developed by plants when under attack by pathogens this kind of as bacteria or fungi – in other phrases, they are a part of a plant’s defense method. Stilbenoids are potent anti-oxidants, meaning that they support fight free radicals induced by oxidative tension and assistance wholesome cellular aging. They have also shown promise for the support of heart overall health, cognitive perform, sports nutrition, bodyweight management and the maintenance of blood stress and blood sugar amounts presently within standard ranges. For example, a human clinical trial led by Dr. Daniel M. Riche at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy identified that pterostilbene, the stilbenoid in blueberries, have beneficial effects on systolic and diastolic blood strain in adults. While a lot of animal scientific studies have identified pterostilbene to have helpful wellness effects, this was the 1st examine conducted in humans.

 500 Cartons of Blueberries

Now, here’s the shock. Although a lot of buyers are aware of the health benefits of berries and grapes, what several may not comprehend is that they would have to eat impossibly large quantities of stilbenoid-containing food items in order to unlock their complete health positive aspects. For example, a customer would have to consume a lot more than 500 cartons of blueberries in purchase to get a clinically relevant volume of pterostilbene. The same goes for grapes: a client would have to drink gallons of wine — one hundred glasses a day or much more — in purchase to ingest an efficient quantity of resveratrol, the stilbenoid discovered in grapes, in accordance to Dr. David Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Healthcare School who has studied resveratrol extensively.

 Supplements Might be the Resolution

The great information is that stilbenoids are widely accessible in supplement kind, thus enabling customers to get a advantageous serving that is the equivalent of hundreds of pounds of berries or gallons of wine in a every day capsule. Which raises the question of which kind of stilbenoid supplement to take — resveratrol or pterostilbene. The reply is pterostilbene, which has superior bioavailability and a longer half-lifestyle, which means that it gets into the entire body far more effortlessly and stays there longer to operate its magic. The bioavailability of pterostilbene is 80 %, compared to only 20 % for resveratrol – in other words, 60 % far more pterostilbene is obtainable to the physique. Pterostilbene also has a half-life that is 7 instances longer than that of resveratrol, which means that it persists longer in the entire body: 105 minutes for pterostilbene versus 14 minutes for resveratrol. In addition, the level of cellular uptake for pterostilbene is two to 4 occasions greater than that for resveratrol and it has higher oral absorption and metabolic stability.

The upshot is this: yes, all-natural compounds referred to as stilbenoids exist that may well support assistance heart well being, cognitive perform and sports activities nutrition, function as an anti-aging antioxidant and aid handle excess weight and sustain wholesome blood sugar ranges and healthier metabolic process currently inside of the normal ranges. And yes, these substances are obtainable in berries, grapes and wine. But if you truly want to consume ample stilbenoids to reap well being rewards, you have to bring nature to the vitamin shelf in the kind of a every day stilbenoid supplement, preferably in a highly bio-obtainable form this kind of as pterostilbene.

Frank L. Jaksch Jr. is the founder and chief executive of ChromaDex®, an innovative normal products business that gives proprietary, science-based mostly solutions and substances to the dietary supplement, meals and beverage, animal well being, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. ChromaDex is the manufacturer of pTeroPure®, a 99 percent pure, patented, nature-identical form of pterostilbene. For far more details, go to www.pteropure.com.

Wonderful Sources: Healthier Living Keep

Bringing Nature to the Vitamin Shelf: What is a Stilbenoid