Richmond: Officially polluted
Air quality ranks among NZ's worst
SARAH DUNN
CLEARING THE SMOKE: Richmond's air pollution has improved since this photo was taken from Valhalla Drive in 2001, but the town's air quality is still a long way off meeting Government standards.
Communities
Richmond is among 22 New Zealand towns with the worst air quality in the country.
However, Tasman District Council resource scientist Trevor James said he had expected the "polluted" designation since 2000.
Trevor said there were a number of air pollution hotspots in Richmond, based around areas with a high percentage of older houses that have inefficient woodburners.
"There's a real patch of that between Gladstone Rd and Wensley Rd just south of Richmond central, and then to the north as well, northwest of Salisbury Rd," said Trevor. Other repeat offenders were located near the Richmond deviation and slightly east of that area.
Trevor said people with "particularly obvious" discharges of smoke and pollutants on their property could look forward to a gentle reminder from council officer Helen Dempster, who will be driving around monitoring residential areas.
Last year's Ministry for the Environment report 'Clean Healthy Air for All New Zealanders: National Air Quality Compliance Strategy to Meet the PM10 Standard' requires all airsheds with more than 10 exceedences (averaged over five years) to achieve three or fewer by 2016.
Breaching the national air quality standard more than once each year for five years means an area was officially polluted - Richmond had exceeded the standard six times already this winter and done so more than 35 times annually in previous years.
In order to breach air quality standards, the air in a particular district, or "airshed" must be recorded as containing an average of 50 micrograms of particles measuring less than 10 micrometres (PM10) in each cubic metre of air from midnight to midnight.
Once invoked, "polluted" status lasts until the area has gone five consecutive years without breaching air quality.
Medical Officer of Health at Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, Dr Ed Kiddle, said he had been aware of Richmond's particular "winter air problem" for some time.
"The health effects are reasonably significant," he said.
"Certain people are more likely to be affected if they go out and about and are breathing in this air. The main pollution problem is with those particles, PM10s."
He said when particles measuring 10 micrometres or smaller are breathed into the lungs, they could cause or worsen respiratory diseases.
The particles could also bring on cardiovascular diseases.
Asthmatics, people with chronic bronchitis or other respiratory issues, pregnant women, children and the elderly were especially vulnerable to the effects of polluted air, Ed said. Illnesses triggered by exposure to PM10s may not be immediately obvious.
"For people with asthma, the asthma might play up quite quickly, but someone who, say, triggered a bout of bronchitis, they might then get a lung infection or pneumonia and that might come a week or so later."
Other people might experience subtle symptoms over a period of months after exposure to high air pollution levels.
Trevor said Richmond was slowly but surely on its way towards improvement. It was consistently breaching air quality standards 30-35 times per winter when the council first began taking measurements in 2004, and rapidly fell to the low 20s during 2007-2009.
After stricter rules around emissions and wood burners kicked in in January 2009, the council saw exceedences drop below the teens to 11 in 2011.
"A lot of education and enforcement ensued and that's part of the reason for that steep change," said Trevor.
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