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: Opinion
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...
What we’ve learned about NO2 (part one)
As far as I can tell the last breach of the AQNES for nitrogen dioxide happened in 2022 at Auckland coming after at least a decade of falling concentrations. It looked like maybe NO2 was yesterday’s pollutant. Then late in 2021 the World Health Organisation slashed...
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...
Air Quality in New Zealand: The Reality Behind the Numbers
The recently released IQAir report (2024 IQAir World Air Quality Report | IQAir,) has highlighted New Zealand as one of the few countries meeting WHO air quality standards. However, this paints an incomplete picture. Air pollution remains one of the greatest...
NZ Science Reorganised, but we still don’t have an air quality research programme
Last week, NZ Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins announced “the largest reset of NZ Science sector in more than 30 years”, including the merging of 8 Crown Research Institutes into three “Public Research Organisations”. Yet New Zealand still...