Croydon mum comes up with 29 different ways to avoid the busy polluted road near her home

A Croydon mother has created 29 different routes to avoid a busy road near her home to avoid exposing her asthmatic son to air pollution. Karina Fernandez and her nine-year-old son suffer from asthma and live close to busy Portland Road in Croydon, a busy A-road that has a high flow of traffic.

“It’s obviously inconvenient for my sons and I to spend any time walking down Portland Road, so we’ve devised, over the years of living there, 29 much longer ways to get wherever we need to go to avoid walking as it is terribly polluted,” she said.

Ms Fernandez’s elaborate method of avoiding Portland Road involves taking surrounding secondary roads to bypass the local area. Her son has been hospitalized several times over the years with asthma, which she believes has been exacerbated by high pollution levels.

Read more: New air pollution alert system warns NHS doctors and staff in London when it gets dangerous

“It’s deeply, deeply terrifying to sit by your child’s hospital bed knowing that everything they try doesn’t seem to make a difference and in some cases you have to think outside the box to get their breathing back to normal, ” she said.

“I very often see lines of families walking their children down Portland Road, very young babies in prams, toddlers in prams, vehicle emissions at head height.”

A recent City Hall review found that in every London borough, levels of the toxic pollutant nitrogen dioxide exceeded WHO recommendations. In 22 London hospitals, 15,000 children were admitted with serious breathing problems in 2023.

“There are many, many, many families whose kids go to the school my kids go to and they actually live on Portland Road and they can’t go 29 other ways to avoid it. That’s where their house is and when they open their windows in the summer and the traffic is backed up, that pollution goes right into their houses,” she said.

Ms Fernandez volunteers with Mums for Lungs, a campaign group advocating for people’s right to cleaner air. She will often talk to people in stationary cars to explain that leaving their engines running contributes to pollution levels.

“Most of the time people are very responsive, but most people just have no idea that driving their car and sitting there, maybe waiting to pick up their child from school, is doing any harm. It would be such a dream if we were able to talk about this from a position where everyone is working together to create a healthy and safe environment for children, but also for all of us, without it becoming about drivers vs. pedestrians.” she said.

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