Regions to be cheerful?

The northeast is the best place to get a good night’s sleep in Britain. Hartlepool came out on top in a study measuring noise pollution, night-time temperatures and ambient light levels. Newcastle also featured in the top 10 – as did Manchester, whereas Leeds, Bristol and London rated worst. But it’s the Scots that are buying the most remedies for sleep problems, according to a Holland & Barrett survey. London commuters take the most energy-enhancing supplements. Northern Ireland topped the capital on stress levels, though. Stress headed the list of complaints there, followed by depression. There are 140 Londoners to each of the capital’s trees. The Forestry Commission has counted 65,000 trees across London’s 7,000 hectares, making it the world’s largest urban woodland area. With nine million people, though, humans still massively outnumber the woody stuff. A pedestrian walking along Marylebone Road in London for 48 minutes would breathe in the same amount of oxides of nitrogen as would be inhaled by smoking one cigarette. Oxford is worse; there it would take just 24 minutes. It’s not surprising, then, that about 115,000 more Brits a year migrate to rural areas than move to towns – so exposing themselves to the countryside’s higher average concentrations of low-level ozone pollution, and of course contributing to the rapid rise in rural traffic. Decisions, decisions...

10 November 2004