I am so glad that you have published Mr Sedgwick’s letter reference Damaging Fumes of June 19. The truly serious problem of health damaged by polluted air needs to be constantly highlighted.

For 20 years my husband and I lived on the south side of Atworth, backing onto farmland towards Broughton Gifford. Dust around the house was pale brown in colour: normal. In 2010 having reached old age we moved to a smaller house within a pleasant estate on the opposite side of Atworth behind houses fronting the Bath Road.

Dusting revealed not pale brown dust but black. Two or three times per week every ledge within the house needs to be wiped to remove black dust blown in from the Bath Road which daily carries an almost endless stream of juggernauts, lorries, vans and all manner of other polluting vehicles, some of these domestic.

So what are we breathing? What are the hundreds of babies, toddlers, all children living in Atworth, breathing every day as they walk to and from school along the Bath Road, or play by their homes? Mr Sedgwick calls the pollution problem pernicious. How right he is.

Mavis King MBE, Godwins Close, Atworth.