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 < Back Government Not Doing Enough On Air Quality November 16th 2006 "3 times as many people die due to Air Pollution than to traffic accidents every year but NSW Health and Dept of Environment & Conservation simply buck pass to each other over the health effects of air pollution in Sydney," said NSW Democrat MLC, Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans on the release of a Parliamentary Report into the Health Effects of Air Pollution in the Sydney Basin today. "The Government set modest targets so it can meet them without doing too much. Polluters are licensed irrespective of new technologies, and meet their licence conditions. It’s up to the Government to take a stronger line on this, as was shown in the ALCOA case, where pollutants allowed are at a higher level than Weston Aluminium, which is a lot further from population centres." The lack of public transport planning means that VKT (Vehicle kilometres Travelled keeps rising, adding to air pollution. The government has had a bit of a free ride on this by the fact that newer vehicle technology has helped them improve the amount of exhausts despite the increased VKY. "The RTA has been very cavalier re the ventilation in tunnels and will not even take the health department’s advice about winding up windows in the M5 East tunnel, and ongoing dispute. They are also reluctant to put conditions on old diesel motors that are a very significant cause of air pollution, especially PM2.5 particles, which a re only 2.5 microns in diameter". "It is good that the government has agreed to measure PM2.5 as these particles, being smaller is not filtered in the nose, and go deeper into the lungs. The measurement of these gives deceptive results because they are much smaller and lighter than PM10s. There are 64 PM2.5s in the same mass as a PM10, so when air pollution is measured by weight, there can be a lot more particles, though there is less pollution per cubic metre. Air [pollution symptoms relate best tot PM2.5, probably because it relates to the amount of particles getting into the Lungs. “Monitoring stations are placed away from ‘hot spots’, such as busy highways. This means that the actual effects may be worse than they appear to be from the measurements," Dr Chesterfield-Evans concluded. |
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