For two weeks Islander Ollie Taylor monitored the air quality at the top of St Saviour’s Hill, a road used by many children walking to school.
He found that the level of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide, which is known to cause respiratory disease, exceeded the legal limits set by the EU.
Mr Taylor used an air-monitoring kit ordered from environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth, who are carrying out a clean-air campaign.
The results showed that there were 42.59 micrograms per cubic metre of nitrogen dioxide, which is generated by motor traffic, in the area, ranking it alongside the worst pollution hotspots in the UK’s major cities.
The EU legal limit is 40 micrograms.
Mr Taylor, who works in compliance and is a JEP columnist, said that he had been concerned about the air quality in the area for some time.
‘I walk up and down there every day for work and there’s a lot of schoolchildren who do as well and that’s what’s really worrying,’ he said.
‘It makes me wonder why we aren’t doing more to deal with pollution, like trying to introduce more electric cars,’ he added.
Environment Minister Steve Luce said that while air quality was not his department’s ‘top priority’, he would be interested to find out more about the results.
‘If there are areas where the air quality is poor we would be interested to find out more about it.
‘We would be interested to see the readings he took. They do conflict with the data we have which says that air quality in Jersey is very good.
‘But if schoolchildren are breathing polluted air on their way up to Grainville then we do want to know about it,’ he said.
