EECA report: “Indoor combustion in New Zealand homes: health effects and costs” Our commentary and opinion A new report has shown how emissions from gas stoves and unflued gas heaters pose a burden on health that is comparable in size to the burden from outdoor air...
BLOG: Indoor Air Quality
Ventilation in schools (and elsewhere?) – to automate or educate?
My first car was a 1976 Ford Escort. As a junior engineer I could lift up the bonnet and see how all the parts connected together to work in a co-ordinated system. And when it didn’t work, I had a good chance of being able to figure out what the problem was and fix...
Training children to manage classroom air quality
Can you keep the air in your place free of viruses even when its crowded, free from chemical contamination, maintain good ventilation without exposing yourself to smoke from outside, and all without letting out the heat or raising the energy bills? These kids from...
Dr Ian Longley, Joins Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air
Dr Ian Longley, Director at The Air Quality Collective, Joins Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air (Press Release: Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air) New Commission announced at the United Nations unites more than 100 leaders from 30 countries to drive...
On Tsunamis and Pandemics
What if we thought about pandemics the way we think about tsunamis? My eye was caught today by an article on how effective the pan-Pacific tsunami warning system had been following this week’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the cost of Russia. An estimated 3 million...
The North Shore fire – did you close your windows?
Last Thursday (24th April) the mobile phones of thousands of Aucklanders simultaneously throbbed and wailed as a civil defence emergency announcement was broadcast across the city. A huge and devastating fire had broken out at a recycling centre on the North Shore...
Portable air cleaners are great, but they could be better
Portable air cleaners – by which I mean domestic appliances that use a fan to pass air over a HEPA filter and are sometimes referred to as PACs – often claim to remove 99.9% of bad stuff (viruses, smoke, dust) from the air. If that were true, why are we all not using...
Does New Zealand have an air quality problem?Part three: Mouldy homes, stuffy offices, infectious interiors
New Zealand has some of the sweetest, purest, clearest clean air anywhere in the world. Most of the time. In most places. This is the continuing story of those other times and places. New Zealand is harbouring four guilty secrets about its air – four situations...