Feature
RETHINKING HOW WE TACKLE
AIR QUALITY AND HEALTH
By Duncan Urquhart, associate director, air quality and permitting, Aecom
Imagine a doctor treating a patient based on a partial diagnosis: you wouldn’t
expect the best outcome. So it is with air pollution.
HEALTH AND LEGISLATION
There is a lack of a holistic view of the effect of air pollutants on
the population due to a disconnect between ambient air quality
legislation, public health responses, and workplace exposure to
air pollutants. Exposure to air pollutants experienced at work,
at home or in public places are treated differently. We also do
little to consider air quality in conjunction with factors such as
health, poverty, social mobility and education; and we do little to
understand the implication of time spent in different locations.
For example, due to a disparity between environmental and
occupational regulation the customer buying a coffee in a railway
station concourse is subject to a far lower pollution threshold
than the barista serving the coffee. So, we allow the barista to
inhale a far higher dose of pollution during the course of a day
than the customer.
Take another example: we are very careful when it comes
to allowing new houses to be built alongside a polluted road,
yet offices and shops can be built along the same road with no
concern for the effect of the pollution on the office worker or
shop assistant.
www.hvacronline.co.za
G
uidance and legislation around air quality are based on
outdated, static approaches that are limiting our individual
and collective ability to tackle air pollution effectively.
Local air quality is getting a lot of air-time as awareness
about the impacts of pollutants on our health, lives and planet
increases. However, the tools and guidance we use to manage
local air quality and tackle air quality issues derive from decades-
old studies and incremental updates to legislation.
The result is rigid appraisal methods focused on legal
compliance with sometimes semi-arbitrary thresholds and
limits based on simplistic ideas of where people spend time. As
air quality professionals we should be challenging this irrational
and discriminatory situation. We need to consider what level of
pollution people are exposed to, irrespective of what activity
they are involved in or whether they are at home, at work or at
leisure in a public place. We also need to consider how to take
better account of those who are more sensitive to the health
effects of pollution.
How air quality is managed or controlled is a discussion that
requires serious dialogue.
HEALTH AND BEHAVIOUR
Understanding of air pollution and our exposure to it is
improving. For instance, we know that indoor air pollution can be
exacerbated by energy-efficient building regulations that limit air
changes, or by reliance on mechanical ventilation from polluted
external locations that have been determined by construction
and design needs rather than health or environmental concerns.
We also understand the benefit of issuing alerts and advising
people to alter their behaviour – this is particularly useful for
asthma sufferers.
Our daily lives are so varied, but our understanding is limited
about the difference in exposure between those who walk, cycle,
drive or take the bus or train to work, for example. We don’t
know how opening a window or altering car or bus ventilation
affects our exposure to pollution. We do attempt to address air
pollution in specific situations such as railway stations, but even
this doesn’t look at the different ways people within the space
could be affected.
The result is that we focus our efforts on rigidly defined
locations based on static data sets such as address point data.
We don’t look at the individuals who use that space and how they
actually spend their time.
RACA Journal I April 2020
43