Nine-year-old campaigns for cleaner air

Nine-year-old school pupil Jakub Kozlowski campaigns for cleaner air. 

Jakub has been campaigning to reduce the level of air pollution around his school after learning that it was located in one of the most polluted locations in Bristol. 

Parson Street Primary School sits on the corner of one of Bristol’s busiest junctions and the location of nearby traffic lights means there is a constant queue of cars waiting for extended periods outside the school gates. 

Jakub began his campaign in early 2021 by running 2km to school every day for two weeks in order to raise enough money to purchase banners for his school’s fence that ask drivers to turn off their engines whilst idling. 

After meeting his initial goal, Jakub also became aware of the many benefits that clean indoor air has for learning and concentration. He contacted Blueair who donated air purifiers for the whole school.

Jakub comments, ‘We have had our purifiers working for the last few weeks, it’s made a massive impact for our classroom. I used to be able to taste the pollution sometimes but now that the air purifier is on, we have none of that.

‘Also, both my friends, who have asthma, have been doing alright as well. The next thing we are planning to do is to use the money I raised to pay for green screens around the school. Hopefully, that will help with air pollution in the playground. Thank you very much Blueair for helping all of us but mostly our Lungs.’

Fiona Price, Business Manager for Parson Street School added: ‘We are so grateful to have received the donation for the new term – not only to protect staff and pupils from air pollution but also to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 at a time when the government and scientists are putting emphasis on the effectiveness of air purifiers.

‘We are an inner-city school with an extremely busy road outside of our boundary, many cars idle at the traffic lights causing lots of emissions from their exhausts. One of our pupils started to raise awareness of the pollution in our area and more specifically around the school. Since the units were installed, our staff and pupils have already noticed the impact on their health and wellbeing with some saying they can feel the difference when they breathe. We cannot thank Blueair enough.’