Pollution pods exhibition

 Quoted from Kings Cross site:

This powerful installation by Michael Pinsky will get you thinking about our consumerism and the effect it has on the planet.

Pollution Pods is made up of five geodesic domes, each with a different environment and air quality. When you step inside, you will get the chance to feel, taste and smell the environments of five different cities across the globe, from the pristine arctic air of Tautra in Norway to the ultra polluted New Delhi. Visit from 12 noon – 7pm.

Each dome houses an environment where the temperature, air quality, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide levels of it’s location is recreated.

Starting with the ultra-clean air of Tautra in Norway, you’ll continue through London and the astonishing smog and pollution of New Delhi, Beijing Sao Paolo. Read about what you’ll experience in each pod below.

The pods travel around the world and have attracted over 30,000 visitors to date. They serve as a reminder that whilst here in the developed world, we live in an environment with relatively clean air, people in countries such as China and India are being poisoned by the airborne toxins created from industries fulfilling orders from the West. Pollution Pods allows you to feel, taste and smell the environments that are the norm for a huge swathe of the world’s population. The installation provides a thought-provoking comment on how interconnected our world really is, and how potent climate change is for the planet.

Trondheim, Norway

The first pod that visitors enter recreates the atmosphere in Trondheim, Norway, famously one of the cleanest in the world. The air here is noticeably fresh, and kept at a slightly cool 16 degrees. The impression is that you are by the sea, enjoying the pleasant sensation that the lungs are opened up and that you can breathe easily.

Pollution Pod creator, Michael Pinsky does add a word of caution to the concept of Norway’s idyllic atmosphere. Firstly, Norway enjoys such clean air in part because all of its industry is outsourced, offering little solution to a global problem. Secondly, during the winter months, Norwegians switch their vehicle tyres to snow tyres to deal with icy conditions. This causes the air pollution levels to rise drastically, as large particulates are pulled into the air due to the increased friction on the roads.

London, England

Step inside the London pod, and you are hit with the smell of combusted diesel and tar.

Traditional industries have died out in London, meaning that our experience of pollution is almost entirely driven by the combustion engine and private transportation, diesel vans, and taxis. And while buses are switching to electric, on the whole, idling engines and busy routes are a problem.

There are still far too many people choosing to drive when there is a fairly good public transportation system in the city and we can cycle and walk most places. In boroughs like Camden, Islington and Hackney, less than 40% of people own a car, yet they still suffer from poor air quality because of people driving into and through the boroughs.

There are signs that the poor air quality in London is not inevitable. Right here in Kings Cross, the trains that pull into the stations are electric and the entire estate is pedestrianised, meaning we enjoy a much better air quality than other parts of the city.

The diesel emissions and nitric oxide emissions so prevalent in London have serious consequences – exposure to nitric oxide affects brain development in young children and one in five children living in London suffer from asthma.

New Dehli, India

Step into the New Dehli pod to experience the worst air pollution in the world – hot, humid, and with limited visibility, the effect is one of a suffocating haze.

There are multiple reasons why this is the case, India also has a lot of pollution-producing industry, the population is set to hit over a billion, and poorly maintained diesel cars drive on poorly maintained roads, billowing emissions and large particulates into the air.

November, just after the harvest, is the worst time for pollution. People burn their crops across the area, and, as New Delhi is in a basin, the smoke gets washed into the middle of the city and lingers there, creating days and days of virtually zero visibility. This pollution has a very visible effect on New Delhi’s citizens, with rates of lung cancer in young people at an alarming high.

There is an official pollution index produced by the World Health Organisation. Their suggested healthy limit is 40. London can be anywhere between 25 and 90; on November days in New Dehli, it exceeds 1,000.

Beijing, China

The Beijing pod also represents a day in winter, when the air pollution is much worse as people still use coal and wood to heat their homes. This creates a smog, not unlike London in the 1950s. Cool and somewhat clammy, you can smell burning wood in the air inside this pod, alongside another unmistakable stench: sulphur.

The smell of sulphur is thanks to industry. China is a powerhouse producer and that industry has an impact not just on the city of Beijing, but on global health, emitting some 27% of the carbon emissions on the planet.

Worryingly, this output doesn’t seem to be slowing down any – coal power plants and steelworks are being built across the country. Pinsky warns that China is such a big player in global emissions that if it does not engage with COP26, then the movement is effectively useless.

Pinsky also stresses how much the global crisis is connected to personal choices. These toxic industries are often producing cheap and useless items that we continue to buy. Our desire to access inexpensive goods is at the expense of everyone’s health.

São Paulo, Brazil

The quality of the air in Sao Paulo is truly distinct. Rather than diesel engines, Brazilians use ethanol. Sourced from sugar beets, the effect is a sweet-but-sour fruity, vinegary smell that becomes sickly after a while. The pod sits at a temperate 20 degrees, but the ozone levels here are high, so high they make your eyes water.

While the fuel source is a crop, and thus a renewable source of energy unlike fossil fuels, it is still not a planet-friendly solution. The process, from growing the beets to producing ethanol has a huge ecological impact: it requires lots of water, it’s a monoculture (meaning it’s the only crop grown), and the practice of growing any crop not intended as food tends to be unsustainable.

Pollution Pods by artist Michael Pinsky in Granary Square, King's Cross

…and back to Trondheim

When you leave Sao Paulo, you step back into Norwegian air. If you didn’t notice much of a difference stepping from Granary Square and into this dome to begin with, there is a very noticeable contrast and a welcome breath of fresh air leaving the other cities behind.