By: Ian Longley So farewell RMA and 20 years of doing air quality management the way we do it In December 2025, the NZ government revealed its replacement for the Resource Management Act (RMA) which has governed how we manage ambient air quality for over two decades....
By: Gustavo Olivares Because of its significant cost, monitoring air quality used to only be available to government agencies. However, over the past decade, cheaper air quality sensors have made it to the market and have been used in earnest by many people, from...
By: Ian Longley 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...
By: Ian Longley 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...
By: Ian Longley 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...
By: Ian Longley 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...
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...
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...