A SOUTHAMPTON health boss has admitted the city is “an awful place” for air pollution – just weeks after closing an air-monitoring station in one of our worst-affected areas.

Cllr Dave Shields, cabinet member for health and social care, told a public meeting that finding out the city’s air pollution problem was worse than Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Leeds had been a “wake-up call”.

Now he has pledged to find a solution.

“It did alert me. We have some well-known problems here and I expect to see us doing badly for smoking and teenage pregnancy but this was a bit of a wake-up call for me,” Cllr Shields told the Western Docks Consultation Forum meeting.

Cllr Shields added the roads to the port were a key source of pollution and the council needed to work with port bosses ABP Southampton and other transport providers to cut emissions.

He said: “We have to try and get money and use our experiences to put pressure on where we can to mitigate the problem. As the port expands it will probably generate more traffic movements. I want more people to go by boat and rail but we don’t have control of these things so it will probably be a bit of a slog.”

As reported by the Daily Echo, the city council decided to axe an air-monitoring station based in Millbrook Road close to Redbridge Community School and the Redbridge Road, which measures potentially toxic fumes from traffic and industries.

It will cease operating at the end of the month.

Steve Galton, prospective Conservative city council candidate for Millbrook, said: “We should be upgrading air quality management so it will give us actual figures to reveal what we are breathing and give us a bargaining tool to get government grants to fund solutions.

“We have the equipment that has been taken out of Redbridge School so we could use that. Let’s not wait, let’s upgrade what we have and get that data.”

The Western Docks Consul-tation Forum looks at environmental issues in Redbridge, Millbrook, Regents Park and Freemantle.

Residents at the meeting agreed the problem was critical and raised concerns about the future health of the population.

Forum committee member Christine Cassell said: “Our real worry is the air quality which could escalate to a major problem. If you go to Winchester and look down on Southampton you can see this haze or smog around it.

“We have a community here that is going to have to put up with a lot of health problems and that is only going to add to our health bill. How are we going to solve this problem?”