We’ve seen claims that air pollution on Gosforth High Street is being made worse by the social distancing lay out. This doesn’t appear to be true. https://twitter.com/airgosforthhist/status/1385476214492651521

Actually recent measurements suggest air quality is slightly improved on 2020, even though traffic in April 2020 was only 40% of normal (and much less than now) because of the lockdown. https://twitter.com/airgosforthhist/status/1253204543459991552

We compared air pollution on Gosforth High Street in September 2020 against previous years, and that also showed air pollution wasn’t as bad as before.

We should be wary of drawing firm conclusions from limited data, and with so much else going on, but this isn’t unexpected. One lane of traffic should emit less pollution than two.