In order to understand the potential health impacts, costs and impacts of air pollution across the country, the Department of Environment, Department of Health, Department of Transport and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency commissioned the study “Health and Air Pollution in New Zealand 2016 (HAPINZ 3.0)”.
It was conducted by the consultancy Emission Impossible, which used data on population, health and air quality from 2016 to analyze the situation.
Project leader Dr. Gerda Kuschel said the study showed that even low levels of air pollution across almost all of New Zealand were a cause for concern.
The study found that more than 3,300 adult New Zealanders died each year from exposure to air pollution, and vehicle emissions were responsible for two-thirds of those cases.
Low air quality was also responsible for more than 13,100 hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease, including 845 childhood asthma hospitalizations and more than 13,200 childhood asthma cases.
dr. Kuschel said it wasn’t really possible to say which city or region was more concerned, but emphasized that Invercargill had the highest rate of premature deaths from air pollution.
“In terms of rate, the city of Invercargill is the highest with 219 per 100,000 people aged 30 and older in 2016.
“The city of Invercargill does indeed come out as the worst on a per 100,000 people basis, but in other places more people die prematurely.
“However, the estimated total number of deaths in Invercargill is 74, which is much lower than in other places and especially in Auckland – at 939.”
The same trend was found when examining the number of hospital admissions.
Auckland had the highest number of admissions with 3,921 and restricted activity days (days when people couldn’t do the things they could have done differently had there been no air pollution) at 537,319 in 2016.
Invercargill had the highest number of hospital admissions at 470 per 100,000 people (all ages) and the Queenstown Lakes district had the highest number of restricted activity days at 86.7 per 100 people (all ages) in 2016.
Invercargill also scored highly in terms of the cost per person of poor air quality.
While Auckland had the highest total social cost at $4.45 billion in 2016, Invercargill had the highest cost per person at $6294.
When asked if she thought the data would be different in 2022, given that there had been many air quality initiatives since 2016, Dr. Kuschel that even a 5% reduction in pollution could yield significant health improvements.
“Every initiative helps. The nice thing about this study is that it will provide robust data to help assess the effectiveness of any options to improve air quality in New Zealand in the future.”
Environment Southland chairman Nicol Horrell was surprised with the findings, but he hoped initiatives such as the regional air quality plan, signed in 2016, would help.
“Most people would be shocked if this report shows that vehicle emissions are actually a more serious problem than previously thought.
“I think the report is generating more questions than answers at this stage…but it’s fair to say air quality is one of our priorities and we’ll be exploring this new science to make sure we’re improving air quality.”