Integrated National Air Pollution and Health Data

The Challenge

Air pollution threatens human health globally, and a big part of it is caused by humans. In cities across Australia, anthropogenic air pollution comes from energy use and transport infrastructure. Air pollution also comes from the landscape. For example, fires and dust cause air pollution, and we are seeing more of these with droughts getting longer and more severe due to climate change. Even at a low level, it is detrimental to public health. To tackle it, public efforts in such areas as cutting emissions have to be coordinated.

To inform policy changes, epidemiologists and public sector agencies need integrated air pollution and health datasets, ideally at the national level. But with air pollution reporting standards differing from state to state and privacy restrictions on public health data, integrating the datasets is no easy task.

The Response

This project will standardise data inputs from all air pollution monitoring stations in Australia. It will build a database containing all historical and current observations, including those for particulate matter of 2.5 µm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphates (SO₂), ozone (O₃) and ultrafine particles (UFP).

To estimate exposures at high spatial and temporal resolutions, this data will then be used in exposure models that accommodate predictors from: 

• atmospheric chemistry modelling 
• satellite, weather and traffic observations 
• land use and vegetation data. 

These exposure data will be combined with age- and cause-specific mortality in sufficiently populated areas.

The 4 main aspects of the project are:

Who Will Benefit

This project will benefit:

• researchers
• research organisations
• public sector agencies
• government (state and Commonwealth)
• polluting industries.

With access to linked pollution and health datasets, polluting mining and industrial operations will be able to estimate the health impacts of their activities in various pollution mitigation scenarios. The proposed data asset will be made available to all relevant industries to keep them informed about the cost benefits of emissions reductions. 

Government agencies, on the other hand, are required to regulate emissions from industry and weigh these against economic development, employment, and productivity. We recently demonstrated that anthropogenic PM2.5 results in about 2,600 premature deaths annually in Australia with a cost of $6.1 billion based on the value of a statistical life year. The linked datasets will facilitate these calculations at all spatial scales in Australia and inform the government’s economic and environmental policies. 

Socially, the evidence generated by public and research organisations’ use of the data will raise awareness of the health as well as environmental risks of continued intensive use of motor vehicles.

Partners

• Curtin University
• The University of Sydney
• NSW Department of Planning Infrastructure and Environment
• Environmental Protection Authority Victoria
• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
• The University of Queensland
• Monash University

Target Outcomes

The project will deliver:

Key Resources

For more information, visit: 

• the National Air Pollution Monitor Database
• the Collaborative Environment for Scholarly Research and Analysis (CoESRA) website
• the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research Data Analysis Technology (CARDAT) website.