April 21, 2006
ECan’s Timaru air monitoring station moves to Anzac Park
Environment Canterbury’s air monitoring station in Timaru has been moved from the Timaru Main School in Grey Road to
Anzac Park in Parkside, where it’s expected to provide ongoing pollution measurement.
Since monitoring cannot continue at the old site, it is timely to move the station now, so that measurements can
continue through the winter uninterrupted.
Environment Canterbury senior air quality officer, Teresa Aberkane, says the area around Anzac Park may have worse air
pollution than Grey Road and under the new National Environmental Standard, measurements should be taken at the
“worst-case site”.
The station consists of instruments housed in a small building and these are used to measure suspended particulate
pollution (or PM10) and other gases in the air as well as temperature, wind speed and direction. The National
Environmental Standard for PM10 is breached between 35 and 53 times each winter in Timaru, generally from May to August,
when evenings are cold, clear and calm and pollution doesn’t blow away.
Most of the pollution comes from home fires. A 2001 survey of air emissions in Timaru found that the majority of
households relied on woodburners, open fires and multi-fuel burners for their heating requirements.
When the new station is full operational, hourly concentrations of PM10 will be displayed on Environment Canterbury’s
website (www.ecan.govt.nz) and updated every few hours.
ENDS