A Green MEP has slammed RiverOak Strategic Partners' consultation on plans to re-open Manston Airport over the firms "astonishing ignorance" on air pollution.

Air quality campaigner Keith Taylor says claim in the Environmental Impact report are "at best, deliberately misleading, at worst, factually incorrect".

In the report, on which consultation closes tomorrow, RSP claims: "There is 'scientific uncertainty about the health effects of NO' emissions" and "NO is not believed to have impacts on human health".

The Kent MEP, who will submit a full response to the consultation before it closes, said: "It is truly astonishing that a firm trying to demonstrate its ability to run an airport can be so wilfully ignorant of the facts on the UK's air pollution crisis."

On the firm's first claim, Mr Taylor says: "Not only is the evidence for the negative health impacts of NO pollution clear, it is becoming stronger and stronger every day.

"In the UK, NO pollution alone is linked to the premature deaths of more than 20,000 people in the UK every year.

"Additionally, The World Health Organisation warns that NO 'at the concentrations currently measured across Europe' is linked to both asthma in children and reduced lung function in adults."

"It's truly astonishing a firm trying to demonstrate its ability to run an airport can be so wilfully ignorant of the facts on the UK's air pollution crisis" - Keith Taylor

On the firm's second claim, he adds: "It takes an utter disregard for accuracy and/or a complete lack of scientific awareness to ignore the fact that NO is a generic term covering various nitrogen oxide air pollutants including nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO) - which brings us back to RSP's first bogus claim."

Mr Taylor claims the consultation is "filled with misleading and incorrect claims about the environmental and health impacts re-opening Manston Airport will have on the local communities, countryside and biodiversity."

He said: "At best, RSP, is incompetent and scientifically illiterate, at worst, it is willfully trying to mask the true extent of damage of their environmentally-destructive plans.

"On these grounds alone, this pitiful excuse for an environmental impact report should be rejected out of hand."

"Ultimately, Manston Airport is, was and never will be either economically nor environmentally viable, it's time for the prospective developers and Thanet District Council to finally be honest about that."