Air Quality Trail - Whitby Park, Ellesmere Port

Background

Air Quality Trail TitleThe council in partnership with the Community Air Quality Forum and Groundwork Wirral commissioned artist Steve des Landes, has worked with pupils from five schools from Ellesmere Port to challenge the common misconception that Ellesmere Port has poor air quality. Pupils from Westminster, William Stockton, Wolverham and Cambridge Road Community Primary School have had their artwork and ideas integrated into the seven pieces of art that make up the trail.

The trail is the result of this work and to has been designed to:-

  • help local residents and school children understand how air quality has changed since the 1950s.
  • inform local people on how air quality is constantly monitored 
  • help identify environmental indicators of clean air within the park.
  • show how individuals can play their own part in reducing pollution through using their cars less and perhaps walking to school. 

photo of the start of the Air Quality TrailThe Beginning of the Trail

This trail has been designed to help local residents and school
children understand how air quality has changed since the
1950s. The trail is 0.4 miles long and contains seven pieces of
art and a memorial tree - all with a story to tell. It includes work from the children of five local schools.

Test your map reading, visual aligning, reading or running skills and enjoy gaining greater “awairness”.

Additionally, if you’d like to see your name in lights, complete the trail leaflet and send it to the council. If your entry is correct, your name will be shown on the public display units in Ellesmere Port town centre and at Cheshire Oaks.

photo of the gate feature on the Air Quality TrailGate - Local Air Quality Monitoring through the years.

This feature shows how air quality monitoring has changed over time. Sulphur dioxide levels used to be measured using simple chemistry to give a daily average - now it is done using ultra violet light and gives readings every minute.

London smogs in the 1950s caused many deaths from bronchitis and resulted in the Clean Air Acts 1956 & 1968 to control domestic and trade emissions of smoke. To reduce smoke from domestic chimneys, many parts of Ellesmere Port were made Smoke Control Areas, where it is still an offence to emit smoke from chimneys today.

In the display you will see microscope samples of industrial fallout collected in the early 1990s with some examples of what they might look like magnified. Look at the difference between boiler gases and dust.
Today, seven nationally prescribed pollutants are reviewed by the council on a three-year cycle. Many of these are measured round the clock 365 days per year.

You can look at locally monitored data on line by visiting our Real Time Monitoring pages.

photograph showing children using the chimney sculptureChimney

See if you can align yourself so that the chimneys in the feature line up with those in our industrial areas. The Clean Air Act 1968 required large
boiler chimney heights to be approved to “dilute and disperse” emissions. Higher chimneys were judged to be better to spread gases before they fall to ground. Today, many industries are regulated to “Prevent, Reduce and Render Harmless” their emissions.

 

Sandy’s Memorial Tree

The Ellesmere Port Air Quality Forum honoured a local resident in December 2003. Sandy Case campaigned to ensure that community concerns were listened to by local industry.

children using the sycamore sculptureSycamore

Can you align the mirror in this feature with that in The Moth -
the next feature? If you can, this is like one of the light
beams that monitor air quality continually between Stanney High School, the library and Joseph Groome Towers.

Nature has its own pollution indicators - lichens, as described in the feature, and tar spot . In autumn black spots can appear on sycamore leaves. Contrary to popular belief, the presence of the tar spot means that the air is clean. The fungus that causes it does not grow
where the pollutant, sulphur dioxide, is present.

photo of the moth sculpture Moth

This feature represents how the black mutant form of the peppered moth thrived in urban areas compared to its paler coloured variety. In sooty, urban areas the black moth was well camouflaged, less likely to be eaten
and grew in population. In rural areas the paler coloured version survived better where it was well hidden on lichen covered trees.

 

photo of children looking at the images within the bench sculptureBench

Take a rest and look at the pollution removal machines created by pupils at a local school. We have more colourful moths providing a frame.

photo of children at the chestnut sculptureChestnut

Some experts predict that if we don’t change our habits, our actions will have a bad impact on our environment, e.g. floods may increase, sea levels may rise, some areas may become hotter making growing food more difficult and some animals and plants may die out. We all have an
opportunity to make a difference by using less energy and buying fewer
things that use energy to make. This feature gives us some examples
provided by local school children. 
 

Click on the links below for more information about the Air Quality Trail:

Whitby Park Air Quality Trail Map (PDF 559Kb)

Whitby Park Air Quality Trail Quiz (PDF104Kb)

Please return all your completed entries to the Environmental Protection Team, Regulatory Services, Council Offices, 4 Civic Way, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, CH65 0BE

Names of all correct entries will be posted on the Council’s Airwatch website and the public display units in Whitby Road, Ellesmere Port and Cheshire Oaks.

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