Is there something in the air?

12 January 2010

Air quality is New Plymouth is being continuously monitored for the next three to four months - and residents can check day-by-day results online.

It's the Taranaki Regional Council's fourth such monitoring programme but for the first time, results are being fed directly to the Council's website for public viewing.

"It is being presented in a user-friendly graph format, showing results over 24 hours compared with the national environmental standards," says the Council's Director-Environment Quality, Gary Bedford.

"We're anticipating a fair bit of public interest."

The national standards are set by the Government, which requires Regional Councils to demonstrate that they are being met.

"Taranaki has already demonstrated this in its three previous surveys, the last in 2003," says Mr Bedford. "Samples have never exceeded air quality guidelines, always falling into the Ministry for the Environment's categories of 'acceptable' to 'excellent'."

He says this means that general air quality monitoring is not a high priority for the Council. "We still carry out general surveys from time to time but our main focus is to regularly monitor industrial plants and the like to ensure their air emissions meet resource-consent conditions."

Monitoring equipment for the current survey is installed at the TSB Bank building in Devon Street, New Plymouth. Each air sample is analysed for the amount of tiny particles, known as Particulate Matter (PM), it contains. The focus is on particles with a diameter of less than 10 millionths of a metre, known as PM10. Such tiny particles can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing illness or aggravating existing illnesses.

Under the Ministry for the Environment's National Environmental Standard, every cubic metre of air should contain no more than 50 micrograms (50 millionths of a gram) of PM10, averaged over 24 hours, and with only one breach allowed in a year. This standard is to be achieved nationwide by 2013.

There are many sources of PM, including motor vehicles (particularly diesels), wood and oil-burning processes and coal-fired power generation, incineration and waste burning (rubbish or vegetation), smog, and natural sources such as pollen, rock-dust and sea-spray.

The 2003 survey in New Plymouth detected:

• Salt crystals (sodium chloride).
• Mineral material (e.g. soil, silt, clay dust).
• Other crystals - possibly calcium sulphate (gypsum).
• Seeds, spores and pollen (mainly spores from fungi).
• Combustion particles.

Results from the current survey can be seen on the Taranaki Regional Council website.

Go to www.trc.govt.nz/is-there-something-in-the-air/ for background information.
Go to www.trc.govt.nz/air-monitoring-results/ for daily monitoring results.

ENDS

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