WITH the British Heart Foundation saying living in Thurrock could increase the risk of early death, it is clearly time to get serious about pollution.

Any yet, despite years of warnings about the issue, we are still looking at building a second Thames crossing that will run through our area.

We still don’t have a serious answer over the cause of the mysterious dust that is coating people’s homes across Tilbury.

The responses to people’s queries over this specific problem highlight how those in power like to pay lip-service to the environment, but when it comes to taking action that may cost money, or impinge on the workings of a business interest, them become strangely silent.

But people’s lives are at at sake here. If the British Heart Foundation are saying that living in Thurrock gives the equivalent harm of smoking 138 cigarettes a year, the response should be a bit more than a shrug.

Hopefully, as technology progresses and we leave fossil fuel power stations and fume-belching petrol and diesel vehicles behind, the problem will resolve itself.

But in the meantime, people deserve their fears to be taken more seriously by the people in a position to do something about it.

If not, the constant advice that we give up smoking for the good of our health begins to ring a little hollow - not that smoking will help anyone, I stress to add!