THE Government is trying to silence environmental objections to new runways by replacing its own air pollution estimates with much lower ones produced by Britain’s biggest airport operator.

BAA, which operates all the main airports considered by ministers for expansion, will publish next month a dossier of evidence claiming that official estimates grossly exaggerated the number of people exposed to dangerously high levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The research will state that only a few hundred people living near Heathrow would suffer NOx above EU limits if a third runway were built. A few dozen homes would be affected by new runways at Gatwick and a handful at an expanded Stansted, it claims.

Oxides of nitrogen cause lung diseases and breathing problems and the EU has imposed strict limits which will come into force in 2010.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has been shown an early draft of BAA’s findings and has indicated that it is willing to use them to revise downwards its own estimate that 35,000 people at Heathrow would be exposed to excessive NOx. The DfT will also lower its estimate for Gatwick of 7,000 people exposed to NOx if two new runways are built.

Mike Fawcett, the DfT’s head of airports policy, said at a recent seminar at Gatwick that BAA would produce clear evidence that the NOx problem had been overstated.

The aviation industry sees NOx, produced by jet engines and vehicles at airports, as the greatest obstacle in its campaign to build at least three more runways in the South East. The industry wants the first new runway to open at Heathrow by 2013.

Under the DfT’s original estimate for NOx, more than 10,000 homes would have had to be demolished in Harmondsworth, Sipson, Harlington, Hayes and West Drayton to comply with EU limits.

Residents’ groups opposing new runways are considering a legal challenge accusing the Government of allowing its airports policy to be dictated by companies with a financial interest in new runways.

Brendon Sewill, chairman of the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, said: “It is unacceptable for the Government to replace its own estimates for air pollution with those of a company which stands to profit from airport expansion.

“BAA’s results have to be viewed with scepticism because it is always possible to obtain the figures you want by allowing certain assumptions to creep into research. This reflects the close relationship between the DfT and BAA which dates from the days when it was a nationalised industry.”

The Gatwick campaign claims that there is already a link between air pollution from airports and health problems among local people. In a survey of 2,700 households in the town of Horley, beside Gatwick, 22 per cent of respondents said that someone in the home suffered respiratory problems such as asthma or bronchitis A BAA spokeswoman said: “We have been doing some work to improve the accuracy of the Government’s modelling. We predict that the number of people exposed to NOx above EU limits would be a good deal less than 35,000 at Heathrow.”

British Airways, BAA’s biggest customer at Heathrow, has also produced research challenging the DfT’s original NOx estimates. BA says that the DfT had been wrong to assume that all aircraft took off at maximum thrust. The airline also questions the DfT’s decision to include NOx produced by jet engines up to a height of 3,000ft.

The aviation industry has claimed that it can reduce NOx by introducing cleaner engines.

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