I was reading through the agenda of today’s meeting of the Regional Development and Operations Committee of Auckland Council (which seems to be a very important committee) when I came across the Council’s proposed submission on some changes to the chemical make-up of fuel sold in New Zealand. A lot of the stuff is pretty complicated – beyond my understanding that’s for sure. But there was a paragraph in the introduction to the agenda item that really stood out:
I’ve heard figures like this bandied around before, but – in a similar sense to the good old “congestion costs Auckland a billion dollars a year” I never really knew if it were just an urban legend. It’s actually quite shocking to think that so many people die prematurely as a result of vehicle emissions: more than the average annual road-toll actually. Yet while we spend an enormous sum on road policing and engineering improvements to make our roads safer, it seems that little if any effort goes into reducing vehicle emissions.
Let’s hope the latest proposed changes to fuel recipes can minimise the harm caused by vehicle emissions. It certainly scares the hell out of me that one day I’ll be among this group of people dying prematurely – especially when I smell the diesel fumes coming out of the mass of idling buses along Victoria Street every evening.
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I’m sure that this is an old study from at least three years ago regurgitated? There must be more vehicles than that now.
A report produced in 2002 for the Ministry of Transport showed that around 400 people died prematurely each year from vehicle exhaust emissions.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0705/S00734/tizard-defends-proposed-emission-stds-consultation.htm
That’s not to diminish the argument – we still don’t have emission standards in NZ!
Aren’t we the only developed world country to not have an emissions standard?
The US doesn’t have federal emissions standards. They’re an evil, communist device to enslave good capitalists.
The only reason cars sold in the US have any kind of emissions control is that California has incredibly stringent – some argue they’re the strictest in the world – vehicle emissions requirements, and because they’d be the world’s fourth-largest economy if the state were to cede from the Union they have significant clout to bring manufacturers into line. Who wants to make cars that can’t be sold in such a huge marketplace?
We do have vehicle emission “rules” that state that new and used vehicles must meet certain foreign standards (Japanese, European or American).
http://www.transport.govt.nz/legislation/Vehicle-Emissions-Questions-and-Answers/
The result is that our vehicles have emissions equivalent to those in the EU a decade ago.
Yet, strangely, Auckland’s air pollution “problem” is significantly less than most European cities. Auckland’s PM, SO2 and NO2 measurements are much smaller than those for the listed German, Swiss, Dutch, and Danish cities even though those are often held up as being environmentally advanced. Auckland beats Oslo, despite Oslo having a much smaller population. Auckland has only a fraction of the air pollution of the Italian, Greek, or Spanish cities listed.
The evidence is clear… Auckland’s air is amongst the cleanest in the world.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/table3_13.pdf
Ably assisted by near-constant winds, and we still have sites in the CBD that regularly exceed WHO minimum air quality standards.
You are being ironic right? NZ has had emissions standards since 2003 (OK thats 20 years after everyone else, but we do have them). Since 2008 all vehicles entering the fleet have to be built to minimum standard. (OK, again that’s 20 years after everyone else, but at least we do have minimum standards now). For new heavy vehicles like buses and trucks this standard is Euro 5. This is the standard in place in Europe at present. It is not “ten years old”. Used vehicles generally meet different standards as they are primarily from Japan, but used diesel vehicles now have to meet a standard introduced from 2005 that is roughly equivalent to Euro 5.
The issue with pollution from the NZ vehicle fleet is not the vehicles arriving now, but those already in it. Most of the the buses (and in fact most of the vehicles) in NZ were imported before they have to built to a standard.
MacDoctor talked about air quality standards a few weeks ago. I don’t see a lot to be excited about. If you don’t want to be “among this group of people dying prematurely” then don’t snort asbestos or smoke, because if you do and come down with emphysema then air pollution will shave a couple of months off your life. Otherwise you don’t have much to worry about.
http://www.macdoctor.co.nz/2011/01/31/the-air-we-breathe/
I more inclined to believe a well-researched report http://www.hapinz.org.nz/HAPINZ%20Exec%20Summary%20Final%20Clean%20June%202007%20v3.pdf rather then the musings of a right-wing blogger.
The report is a statistical exercise and I’m sceptical because it conflicts with my own experience of NZ air… It states that the health effects are felt all over the country, not just in cities. But personal experience suggests that air quality in NZ cities is extremely good with only rare haze and no smell, while air quality out of cities is excellent. I doubt if anyone here has an experience of a baby dieing of a respiratory disease (an at-risk category according to the report) or can find a coroner’s report blaming air pollution for the death. So where are the dead bodies? Where are the people with almost-fatal breathing problems, except for those where it was self-inflicted by smoking?
It is usually very hard to say what killed somebody — what caused a cancer, a heart attack, a stroke etc. There are risk factors that add up and poor air is one of them. It makes sense to me that young children who are exposed to poor air could suffer life-long effects and die earlier than they otherwise would. Think how long it took to prove that smoking caused cancer even though it is one of the most toxic things you can regularly do.
Don’t rely on “personal experience”! The most dangerous emissions are particles which are too small to scatter light, and are effectively invisible. The HAPINZ report reflects sporadic episodes of woodsmoke accumulating on windless nights in rural towns in winter and the more persistent day-after-day burden of transport emissions in the cities. Both big cities and small towns have air quality problems – just of a different kind.
Diesel buses… diesel trains… electric (coal & oil) trains…
nukenz, “electric (coal & oil) trains” this comment is deceptive. In NZ the September quarter NZ produced 3% of its electricity from coal. Less that one MWhr of electricity was produced from oil ( so less than 0.004%). Hydro, Gas then geothermal then wind are the biggest energy sources for the grid.
See: http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/76107/NZEQ_September_2010.pdf
Rail electrification is extremely likely to improve urban air quality.
We choose to kill 400 a year in Auckland. It’s as simple as that. Everyone knows that exhaust fumes are toxic. It’s the lethal elephant in the room.
Epidemeiologically it would be hard to tease cause out of the data. I’ve seen figures of 800 people dying annually in NZ because of woodsmoke. (I’d believe it too, NZ has 6 times the world average for childhood asthma for instance, and I hate woodsmoke passionately and would ban all forms of burning wood in an instant), but how would you say exhaust fumes to blame, compared to wood smoke, and compared to first or second-hand tobacco smoke (and I’ve seen a figure of 5000 bandied around for tobacco related deaths). Clearly all particulates are poisons and all should be minimised in the environment. I’d cut wood smoke, tobacco and diesel exhausts, then coal smoke, and then lastly petrol exhausts. It is clear to me that I value clean air more than the rest of society. It is a tragedy of the commons and like fouling our own nests. Clean air, like clean water, clean food and basic shelter are the most basic of human needs. Also of interest might be my blog post at http://cleanairkapiti.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-bluegreens-are-a-complete-waste-of-space/ which talks about the complete hypocrisy of the National Party (surprise, surprise) on this issue.
I checked your cleanairkapiti post. It had this at the bottom:
Ads by Google
The Best Wood Fires in NZ
Masport & Logaire Wood Fires Australasia’s Largest Manufacturer
http://www.masportheating.co.nz
Yeah, I know. It pisses me. Though try complaining to Google about the ads. It’s impossible. They are as distant as Paypal customer service or Phillip Morris’s public accountability. This is what I think of Masport:
http://cleanairkapiti.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/product-review-masport-grandport-series-3-woodburner/
Presumably you blog because you enjoy it or because you want to promote your cause, rather than for the odd dollar you make from Google Ads. Why not just drop the advertising? If nothing else you’d reduce a bit of site clutter.
WordPress gets the money. Not me. I have no say in whether the ads are there or what the ads are. If I can turn them off then let me know how.
The 800 deaths due to woodsmoke and 400 to transport works as follows. On winter days when the wind drops, air quality worsens and hospital admissions go up. Epidemiologists have long developed techniques to seperate out the impacts of air quality from the cold itself and infections. You then do an accounting job of adding up all the atmospheric emissions (emissins per car x number of cars, emissions per woodburner x number of woodburners and so on). And what you get is that transport sources account for about a third of all emissions to the atmosphere. Hence you divide the total health burden by three and you get… 400 deaths due to transport. There’s a whole slew of assumptions and simplifications there, and an epidemiological relationship (between emissions and deaths) does not mean causality (the method assumes transport and domestic emissions have the same ‘illness potential’).
I think there is wide agreement that our air quality in many cities is actually quite poor and that this contributes to our high asthma rates. There is also evidence that exposure to air pollution as a child stops your lungs from developing as fully. Finally, many of the people who die prematurely as a result of air pollution are often people who already have lung problems of some type so they are more sensitive. For example, for complicated reasons, somebody I’m very close only has 80% lung function. When he cycles behind a diesel bus or smells cigarette smokes he often coughs and it’s harder for him to breathe.
However, the HAPINZ data is old and I’ve talked to some scientists who say the methodology is outdated. We could get more up to date and accurate data but the government won’t fund that type of research cos they don’t want to know cos then they might have to stop spending $11 billion on motorways over the next 10 years.
I don’t know where you live Obi but my own experience of air quality in central Auckland is that it is often very poor. For example, if you stand on a street at rush hour you can feel the difference in terms of exhaust fumes. If you walk around my neighbourhood in the evening you can smell the wood smoke and, as I said, if you already have healthy lungs that may not make a difference to you. But if you grew up next to a motorway in a damp house and you have chronic asthma then you will really feel it…
“I don’t know where you live Obi but my own experience of air quality in central Auckland is that it is often very poor. For example, if you stand on a street at rush hour you can feel the difference in terms of exhaust fumes.”
This is most likely caused by buses which tend to have exhaust blowing all over the place and which produce far FAR more PM10s than modern cars. If this is killing one person every two days in Auckland then we’d need to shut down the bus network. Not in a week’s time when they’ll have killed 3.5 more people, but tomorrow.
We’re going to have to scrap plans for the CBD tunnel. The level of PM10s in the Underground is the worst in London, and anyone who has lived or visited the place will have literally seen the thick smelly atmosphere underground.
As for wood fires, these must have been “killing” people for thousands of years. And the HAPINZ report also mentions dust and salt spray as contributing to the perceived problem.
Actually wood fires HAVE been killing people since time immemorial. Currently in rural India many women die of a disease very much like mesothemiloma because they cook over wood (or dung) inside houses for their whole lives. Domestic woodsmoke is a cause of mortality amongst us. Those epidemiological reports actually do mean something. At the very least every person should be allowed to say no to having to breathe smoke. If this means that my neighbours (and places I ride my bicycle in front of) cannot use woodburners then so be it. That is only fair. I should have a right to say no thanks to anything that causes me distress. Woodsmoke is nasty, nasty stuff and it distresses me mightily. If people want to use woodburners then they need to use electrostatic scurbbers, or put the smoke into their houses, rather than into the neighbourhood air. Wood burners have one very bad design fault. They emit toxic chemicals. For this reason they should be removed from NZ homes, and recalled by their manufacturers.
We should do everything in our power to make vehicle emissions smaller, but 1 domestic woodburner throws out more particulate pollution in one night, then a well maintained car does in a whole year.
I’m having fun tonight replying to several comments on this blog. This is because I’m an air quality scientist so this topic is right up my street.
Yes, the HAPINZ methodology is flawed, outdated, built on a horribly shaky inverted pyramid of assumptions, uncertainty and guesses. For example, Lucy you correctly point out the important role of traffic emissions in stunting lung development in children leading to a lifetime of hyper-sensitivity to respiratory problems (themselves exacerbated by exposure to traffic emissions). However, HAPINZ did not include this at all. It made no assessment for impacts on people under the age of 30, and no assessment of the role of traffic emissions on causing underlying chronic ill-health. This probably means that the HAPINZ ‘bad news’ estimates are under-estimates – the true health burden is probably much higher (this is what assessments in the US and Europe have concluded).
HOWEVER, the HAPINZ estimates are a reasonable first attempt (in New Zealand) of the economic cost of not dealing with vehicle emissions. The true number of deaths may be 400 per year, it may be 200, it may be 800. I don’t know. But it probably is in the hundreds, and possibly low thousands if one includes illnesses caused by pollution (although actual death may have been triggered by something else).
An ‘update’ of the HAPINZ report has just been commissioned. Unfortunately, the paltry amount of funding allocated will not allow most of the shortcomings to be addressed. When the updated report is released (probably late this year) it will lead to a small revision in the numbers, but no advance in understanding.
No it is not this simple. The study is no longer valid for one major and another minor reason:
1. Fuel standards changed significantly the following three years, as sulphur levels in diesel (directly related to particulate matter) dropped from 1500 ppm to 500ppm to 50ppm. Diesel vehicles were estimated as being responsible for around half of the negative health effects, so it is a fair assumption that this impact has dropped by over 90%. Benzene levels in petrol have also been dropped by 80% in that time, which is a less dramatic impact, but still notable.
2. The fleet has become cleaner as a result of higher fuel prices (and the flow on of the 1999 abolition of motor vehicle tariffs). The effect of this is likely to have more than matched the growth in traffic, to be around a 1-2% improvement per annum cumulatively.
Those two measures alone are likely to have made a sizeable dent in this statistically derived figure.
Most air pollution in NZ is the result of home heating, only in Auckland is it about transport, and the primary issue is exposure to pedestrians, cyclists and those living on the busiest corridors. It’s not motorways that are the main problem as they are generally sufficiently isolated from pedestrians and homes, in fact some are likely to make a major improvement (e.g. Hobsonville, Waterview) by removing traffic from residential streets.
Emission standards were investigated, but the net effect was not seen to be positive because it would slow down the rate of fleet renewal, which offsets any gains from the standards (especially since most imported vehicles meet the standards of other countries, it would add a compliance cost for a small market for at best dubious gain).
“Those two measures alone are likely to have made a sizeable dent in this statistically derived figure.”
No. These two measures will have made only a tiny dent in the figures. The improvements made by cleaner vehicles and cleaner fuels (which are small to start with) are easily offset by growth in traffic, especially trucks (which is much more than 1 -2 % per annum), the growth in Auckland itself. The ‘proof of the pudding’ is in the continuously monitored air quality in Auckland. Concentrations of pollutants have barely fllen at all, and those pollutants (and monitoring sites) closely related to traffic have shown a static trend, or actual worsening of air quality.
Is there a source for PM10 concentration levels through monitoring? I would be very interested to see.
One place to start is
http://www.arc.govt.nz/albany/index.cfm?6D49453E-14C2-3D2D-B928-C91F35003BCF
For transport-specific impacts pay closer attention to the Takapuna and Penrose sites as they are both close to SH1.
Great thanks. Yes I was wrong, the trend has been only a modest overall reduction. A cleaner fleet would help. TfL estimates it will have cut emissions in 20 years simply through fleet improvements.
The more research on this the better.
“We’re going to have to scrap plans for the CBD tunnel. The level of PM10s in the Underground is the worst in London, and anyone who has lived or visited the place will have literally seen the thick smelly atmosphere underground.”
Come on, obi, you can do better than that kind of stuff – comparing the air quality in a (in comparison) short CBD tunnel designed and built in the 2010s with a meandering, hundreds of kilometers long tube network, of which sizable parts where built in the 19th century… I consider that likely to be rather like comparing the toxicity of the exhaust fumes of a catalytic-converter 2010 car model with the exhaust fumes of a 1920s two-stroke engine.
I believe most of the London problem is due to brake linings. They’re what causes the discolouration around the track and the visible haze. The trains don’t date back to the 19th century… they’re renewed pretty much constantly. Do Auckland trains generate brake dust? Will the new electric units?
But I’m arguing from the basis of inevitable actions you’d take IF you thought the HAPINZ report reflected reality. I don’t. I have no trouble with the concept that someone who is already chronically sick and close to death might have their life marginally shortened by particles of wood smoke, bus exhaust, or sea spray. But I don’t think that otherwise healthy people are killed by car exhaust. If they are, then where is the physical evidence? We’re talking two people a day if HAPINZ is right. Surely a coroner would have noticed by now, or the people about to die would present themselves to the press as do the parents of children killed by reversing cars do?
I don’t know about the Tube rolling stock, but the new Auckland EMUs will have regenerative/rheostatic braking meaning that friction brakes will be used little if at all during regualar service.
@obi – you say “But I don’t think that otherwise healthy people are killed by car exhaust. If they are, then where is the physical evidence? We’re talking two people a day if HAPINZ is right. Surely a coroner would have noticed by now, or the people about to die would present themselves to the press as do the parents of children killed by reversing cars do?”
And you’d doubt the causal link between particulates and asthma, when people do die of asthma attacks?
The Asthma Foundation lists the following triggers for an attack:
* animals
* colds/the flu
* dustmites
* exercise
* food additives (including colours and preservatives)
* fumes, strong smells, chemicals, perfumes, air pollution and smog
* medications (i.e. all non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), beta blockers, aspirin)
* moulds
* pollens and plants
* smoke
* temperature/cold air/change of weather
* occupational hazards
* pre-menstrual hormone changes
That’s a lot of hazards to remove to make life safe for chronic asthmatics. The Foundation mention 132 deaths from asthma in 2006 but doesn’t break this down by age or other factor as far as I can see. I wonder if most cases are frail elderly people already who die during a cold spell?
However that doesn’t have any detail on what triggers the easiest nor which triggers people are exposed to the most.
It doesn’t. My guess is that the critical triggers would be the weather and colds or the flu. nearly 15,000 people died in a heat wave in France in 2003. Most were elderly and I can imagine heat, age, and pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma combining to cause the deaths when it wouldn’t mean much more than sweat for most people.
I have to admit, when I moved to NZ nearly eight years ago and we lived looking out at Waiheke from Eastern Beach, I was very surprised that you could barely see it most days because the air quality was so poor and the “smog” over waiheke and the Hauraki gulf was so bad. Then, once petrol and diesel with a lower/no sulphur content was introduced, the air quality started noticeably improving. A good step forward but the quality of fuel in this country is still appalling. Most developed countries don’t sell 91 octane anymore and a number of European car manufacturers won’t export certain models of car here because the petrol quality is so poor it gives their cars a bad name. So, I can’t say I’m surprised that people die of vehicle emissions. When we only owned one car and my wife cycled to work, she suffered from asthma, now she drives, she doesn’t. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Where did you emmigrate from?
We emigrated from the UK. and ingolfson, my wife drives a convertible and has done for some years so would be exposed to the full lot of pollutants that cyclists are (probably more as she’s stuck in traffic more often!) but still, no asthma. I put this down to the reduction or elimination of something (who knows what) in the petrol/diesel.
Matt, according to research in Sydney CBD, cyclists actually breathe in LESS pollutants than car drivers (can provide the link if wanted). Which doesn’t surprise me – the motorist and the cyclist get their air from the same road environment. But the driver sits in an enclosed box.
The change in your wife’s asthma could have had other reasons?
Similar research has recently been completed in Auckland and Christchurch showing exactly the same thing. The report should be released this year. The difficult thing (which no research has yet covered) is whether cyclists’ lower exposure results in lower health risk.
@ Obi. Those are triggers for an attack, which is a bit different from looking at the long term causes of asthma over a life time.
In answer to your question about whether only elderly people or the chronically ill die of asthma. I don’t know for sure but I doubt it. I almost died of an asthma attack when I was about 3 but my parents got me to hospital in time. I know another little girl who spent many of her childhood years either in hospital or on steroids (which are nasty, nasty drugs with a lot of side effects) because her asthma was so bad it would have (literally) killed her if she hadn’t been on medicaiton. I don’t think we are just talking about illnesses that only affect the very elderly.
I also think that you’re getting worryingly close to advocating eugenics here – sure, we could just give up on improving air quality and let everybody with chronic asthma or reduced lung function suffer but where would we stop? Shall we give up on the chronically obese too? Those wiht a predisposition to high cholesterol? People with disabilities…
Lucy… The World Bank figures I linked to earlier show that of the 120ish world cities they’ve listed, Auckland has the second best air quality after Stockholm (and about equal to Perth). If your asthma was triggered by vehicle fumes then you should be glad you were living in Auckland rather than just about anywhere else in the world.
If the figure of 17,000 job losses from increased air quality standards is correct then that has a cost. People who live in poverty always have poor health outcomes and you will have moved 50,000 more people (the job losses and their families) on to benefits.
The difference between tax collected from working people and the benefits paid to the newly unemployed people is around $600million a year which is money the government no longer has to spend on hospitals, national parks, or rail projects.
You might consider anything less than an infinite number of dollars spent to save a life to be “eugenics”. But in the real world governments constantly make decisions around the amount they’ll spend on public health and safety. I’m guessing the Puhoi to Wellsford business case allocates a price for each life saved. If you consider this to be eugenics then the road will make sense no matter if it only saves a single life. And the same will apply to a Wellington to Whangarei motorway, so lets get started on the business case.
And it isn’t just governments that take that sort of cost-risk analysis around health and safety issues. Assuming you were living in Auckland when you were three, your parents obviously thought the benefits of living in the city rather than Hokitika or Gore or somewhere else with less vehicle emissions outweighed the health risks to their family.
Well interesting reading. Don’t normally do blogs – and don’t like the anominity which allows people to shield themselves – but as a lead author of the HAPiNZ work, felt I could comment.
The basis of this study was on results and data from 10 years ago (2000/2001). Of course things have moved on, of course we could do things differently now, of course we have more information, of course the proven effects have changed because of this. Do we think science just stands still? This study was the best we could do at the time. It involved inputs from 23 key professionals in a number of disciplines. It took $1M and 5 years. I’d be the first to say that some of the revisions suggested here (and all over the place) would add value and accuracy. Oh the benefit of hindsight (and blogging!).
Well regardless of what people think about HAPiNZ and all the other similar studies done all over the world with extremely consistent results – it has had one very large benefit. It helped to inform debate, raise the issues and changes for the better resulted. Government, Councils, Departments, and various organisations started to take it all seriously. They changed policies, plans, funding priorities, and have generally enacted steps that lead to improved air quality. That’s no small thing. There is almost no-one in the game who counters the statement “Poor air quality leads to defined health effects”, even they still argue quite a bit over what, why and how much.
Bigger funding agencies (FRST, HRC, NZTA, MoT etc) have poured additional research funding into the area – that simply wasn’t there 10 years ago. In particular, certain Councils (especially Auckland), and certain departments (especially MoT) have been very pro-active in seeing our knowledge base increase, and their policy decisions more informed. That’s a gain for all of us. Indeed this issue in NZ was undoubtedly sparked by an MoT initiative in 2002, with a preliminary study that got all the other agencies sitting up. Funding supplied by FRST is also aimed at improving our understanding – and I for one await results keenly.
Not much more to say – except for those of you who are working to get, and keep, our environment as clean as it could be – well done – you have a lot of support out there.
As a cyclist I do not believe the notion that cyclists are less exposed to pollution than drivers. Try riding up Symonds street on a bike at 5pm with buses jostling each other at bus stops and driving off in clouds of smoke (incidentally why do their exhausts spew out at ground level?) It is disgusting. I can only assume there are no emission controls for buses, or the entire bus fleet is so old that emission rules do not apply, as previous correspondents have noted.
I realise this is an old post but I was doing a bit of digging and find it interesting there has been minimal developments in the media or parliament in regards to this issue. Perhaps we are still a while off while we grasp the integration of hybrid and electric vehicles into our fleet?