Famous London statues are being fitted with air pollution masks by Greenpeace activists.
Climbers are ascending statues across town — including Nelson's Column, Eros* in Piccadilly Circus, Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace and Newton at the British Library — to highlight the dangers faced by air pollution. 9,500 Londoners die prematurely from air pollution each year.
Greenpeace campaigner Areeba Hamid said “monitoring shows that if these statutes were real people, many of them would often be breathing dangerous, illegal air. That’s why we’ve given them face masks. Of course many millions of Londoners, including kids, are breathing that same air. Kitting everyone out with face masks is not the solution, instead we need to see real political action from the new mayor. We need a Clean Air Zone covering a large part of the city."
* Yes, we know the name of that statue is the colloquial, but let's just go with it shall we?