Increasing numbers of air quality monitors like the ones bought for Armidale are being installed throughout Australia.
This screen-shot of Australia at 7:15 am this morning.Hobart, Perth and Canberra had low pollution (1-2 ug/m2), Melbourne and Brisbane a moderate 22, our city, Armidale was well into the red at 115!
Even though the pollution clears during the day, PM2.5 are so small they behave like gases and seep into our homes along with the air we need to stay alive. This is why a considerable dose of outdoor pollution ends up inside our homes and in our lungs, where the particles can stay there for the rest of your life.
Launceston’s woodsmoke program reduced deaths in winter from respiratory disease by 28% and cardiovascular disease by 20%. Year round, for men, the reductions were 23% (respiratory), 18% (cardiovascular) and 11.4% (all deaths). Based on a population of 100,000, this works out at a cost of less than $21 per resident.
The latest research in New Zealand show that an increase of just 1 wood or coal stove per hectare results in a 7% increase the risk of an infant under 3 needing to visit the hospital emergency department – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/
The 10 or 20 premature deaths we can expect in our city from heart attacks, strokes, cancers and lung diseases, Alzheimers (each premature death representing an average of 10 lost years of healthy life) reduces the population of ratepayers, so it’s bad for our finances as well as the health and welfare of our residents.
By Dorothy Robinson
