Article in the Guardian today says that research on traffic exhaust pollution in Oxford says that standing in the main street in Oxford gives toxic levels equivalent to smoking sixty cigarettes a day. But I rather doubt if most of the ban-smking in pubs brigade will be prepared to draw the obvious conclusion from this interesting statistic.

I know this is your hobby horse, Greg, and you know my views so it should be no surprise but I refer to my earlier statement. I have to drive to do my job! So do millions of others. So what is the 'obvous conclusion'? Traffic is bad for you? If so, what do we do about it? We can ban smoking in pubs as a possitive step. I would be more than happy if we had the same proportion of no smoking pubs as non smokers. We cannot, yet, ban traffic. Roll on the day when we do find the way but it is not possible yet. Unless you know something that the rest of us don't?

The statement about standing in Oxfords main street being equivalent to smoking 60 a day is very misleading as well. Standing for how long? What day? What part of the day? Just another statistic I'm afraid and how many of them do you believe?

Cheers

DtG