• This is an image published by the local newspaper in Albany, the capital of New York and a small city less than 35 kilometres and a 25 minute drive from my school. The smog blanketed the area where my university is.
Intern Grace Canepari from New York State explains the air quality problems in New York in June and July of last year and discusses the effects of and solutions to air pollution in Sydney.
Something’s in the air…
Last year I left my house to walk to my final class of the term at Union College, expecting a warm and clear sunny day like there is normally in June. But when I got outside, something was different. The air was foggy, like a smog had settled over our campus. It reeked of smoke. It was scary—I hadn’t experienced anything like it before.
I hadn’t heard anything about the fires hundreds of miles north of my university and in the adjoining country of Canada, but I started to hear people talking about it all day, as the school administrators started to tell us to stay inside when we could.
By the 3rd of July 2023, bushfires in Canada had consumed over 45,000 square kilometres.
This bushfire season was already being named one of the worst in history, and it was only the beginning of summer.
Although bushfires and smoky skies are pretty normal in states out west, like California and Washington, it was rare for north-eastern states like New York. New York city’s air quality was at its worst levels ever recorded.
Australia had similar unprecedentedly large fires in 2019-20.
Drought there left the bush very dry and vulnerable to a fire. These Australian fires left 33 people dead and scientists estimate that about 3 billion native vertebrates may have also been killed in the fires. Aside from the actual fire, smoke blanketed some parts of the country.
Data suggests a clear association between the poor air quality and emergency department visits for respiratory health in NSW. Click here to learn more about the study on short-term health impacts of the bushfires.
• Image is from WWF Australia, of a bushfire front in Bowraville, NSW.
Smoke is one of the most dangerous types of air pollution—it can be 10 times worse than other types, including car exhaust. This is because wildfires release PM2.5. These microscopic toxins are smaller than 2.5 microns. This is only 1/20th the diameter of a human hair!
• This diagram shows you just how small PM2.5 can be, less than 1/20th the diameter of a human hair.
PM2.5 can easily be inhaled and do damage inside our bodies by entering the bloodstream, organs, and brain. They can hurt children the most as they are still growing. Exposure to air pollution can cause a variety of health issues—it is associated with asthma, Alzheimer’s, cancer, strokes, depression, miscarriages, and premature births, and more human illnesses.
Sydney has 21 air quality monitoring stations that collect information about the air quality. From this data scientists are able to give an hourly update on the city’s air quality, and give it a rating of good, fair, poor, very poor, or extremely poor. This data can be found here.
• Snapshot of air quality map from the NSW Air Quality website at 6:45pm on 8 February, 2024. Chippendale is outlined in blue, and it is right between two of the air quality monitoring stations.
Good air quality is a concentration of PM2.5 that is under 25 mg/m3. The levels in all of Sydney are currently under 6 mg/m3, which means that it is nothing to worry about right now. Overall, Sydney’s air quality is very good right now.
There is no monitoring station in Chippendale where I’m doing most of my intern work, some of it in the footpath gardens there, and where I’m living, but it is situated between two of the monitoring spaces to the northeast and south—Cook and Phillip, and Alexandria. Data from these two stations can be used to assume the air quality of Chippendale. Since both of these stations had a rating of good on the 8th of February 2024, it can be assumed that Chippendale’s air quality was good.
Are there solutions to poor air quality from PM2.5?
Yes!
There are a few things you can do and think about if the air quality were to worsen for a little bit. The easiest thing to do is to wear an N-95 mask to keep PM2.5 out of your lungs and therefore the rest of your body.
There are also a ton of things that we could do to prevent PM2.5 from being created in the first place, such as reducing major bushfires. In places like California, United States, scientists are thinking about bringing back controlled burns. This means that they would essentially set fires in certain areas on purpose to reduce the amount of excess dried brush and vegetation. These controlled burns would make it so that other bushfires that occur will be far smaller and less damaging.
The NSW government has a Clean Air Strategy that was established in 2021. It plans to make industry and transport cleaner and to be better prepared for pollution events, like bushfires. By monitoring the air quality conditions with the stations that I mentioned earlier, they are keeping an eye on air quality and recording it so that they can study the patterns and look at what might cause any changes. They are also watching the health outcomes of people exposed to different types of air, and pollution sources that may potentially cause problems. The overall goal is to make sure that people are not exposed to poor air quality.
Do trees really make the air greener?
Trees can actually reduce the amount of PM2.5 in the atmosphere. This happens through a process called dry deposition. Dry deposition means that particles stick to the trees, which takes it out of the atmosphere and lowers the concentration in the air. Some of the PM2.5 sticks to the trees which takes it out of the air, making it cleaner.
Studies haven’t agreed on how much PM2.5 trees can actually take out of the air, but they do agree that it depends on the wind speed, the concentration of the pollutant, and the surface area of the tree and its leaves. More information about PM reduction by trees can be found in this report, Planting Healthy Air - here.
• Some trees on Myrtle Street, where Sustainable House is.
Although naturally and human-caused bushfires can wreak havoc on air quality, there are some solutions and preventative options that can help to protect us and our air. There is also some exciting research coming out about how planting trees can help our air, even more than you may already think! So next time you pass a tree, be thankful for what it might be doing for you and your air.
Grace Canapari, Intern