air quality has been improving for years

But in summary air quality has been improving steadily for years and is below World Health Organisation safe targets in large parts of Tower Hamlets (but not everywhere), this downward trend has been happening for years even before ULEZ.
During lockdown the Council do not collect air quality data in some months so most of the analysis is pre-2020.
This data comes from Tower Hamlets Council own data sources, the four permanent air quality monitoring stations and the 90 NOX diffision tubes across the Borough
One reason why this has not picked up in reporting is that the GLA only update their analysis every 5 years and this is now out of date.
It is likely that the ULEZ extension in October (if it does improve air quality by 30% as TfL suggest) may well mean that nearly everywhere in Tower Hamlets will have levels of pollutants below WHO safe levels.
This is probably due to the Euro emissions standards for new cars improving on a regular basis so new cars are cleaner then old cars, the more new cars, plus hybrids + electric vehicles the faster the change.
But we need more data in a number of areas especially for PM2.5 as we only measure that in 3 places and only started measuring recently to be 100% sure.
We also do not do enough measurements in places with major construction sites as data capture has been focussed on vehicle traffic. At times the worst place for air quality has not been by the side of a road but in Millwall Park in the south of the Isle of Dogs!
You can check this data for yourself here
https://www.airqualityengland.co.uk/local-authority/?la_id=210
and
https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/environment_and_waste/environmental_health/pollution/air_quality/Advanced_information_on_air_quality/Monitoring.aspx
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Presentation is here as a PDF click here and pictures below
I produced this presentation as a response to a Council presentation where the pictures used were out of date (as based on GLA pics) but the text did largely reflect my presentation below.