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London leads the world in many things. Sadly, pollution is one of them, as the city breached its yearly air pollution limits just five days into 2017.
According to EU law, hourly levels of nitrogen dioxide cannot exceed 200 micrograms per cubic metre more than 18 times in 12 months. But less than a week into 2017, Brixton Road has already smashed the limit. Oh dear.
N02 pollution, produced mainly by diesel vehicles, causes an estimated 9,500 deaths each year.
Other smoggy hotspots include Oxford Street, King's Road and Putney High Street, which breached the hourly pollution limit 1,100 times in 2016. In fact, 2017 is setting up to be even smoggier than last year, when air pollution limits were exceeded later in the year on, erm, January 8.
But there is some good news. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has pledged a whopping £875 million to help fight London's pollution problem.
Maybe it's time to get one of those weird masks? Either that, or this a perfect excuse to quietly bin off that new year's resolution to go jogging every day.
In other crap news, London has the worst food hygiene scores in the UK.