US pollution may be wafted our way

POLLUTED air from the United States could be a threat to the health of people in Britain.

Scientists are to track a plume of air as it heads across the Atlantic towards the UK and western Europe. They want to learn to what extent the pollutants pose a danger by the time they have travelled 5,000 miles.

Dr Alastair Lewis, from the 1.2 million Intercontinental Transport of Ozone and Precursors programme (ITOP), said: "It is highly likely that air leaving the United States contains a cocktail of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, which are emitted from vehicle exhausts and power stations.

"We want to know how these will react together on the way to Europe, and notably whether they will form ozone and particles, both of which can be harmful to humans."

Emission chemicals from industrial centres on the US east coast sweep north as far as Nova Scotia, where they are sucked up into powerful jet stream air currents five miles high.

They are then blown across the Atlantic.