Chris de Freitas: Emissions make most of us fume

Chris de Freitas

For most of us who live in New Zealand, the news is bad. After two years of study, the Government has decided against the testing of motor vehicles to check for emissions that contribute to health problems such as premature death, heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness.

As for a fall-back plan, there is none.

The record shows that New Zealand governments move with glacial slowness on matters of air quality, and the price we pay is terribly high.

A report in 2002 by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and a number of health researchers found that 400 people aged 30 and over died prematurely each year in New Zealand from exposure to microscopic particles from vehicle emissions.

It also estimated that 970 people of the same age group died prematurely each year from air pollution generally.

Despite this appalling state of affairs, we wait indefinitely for legislation to protect us.

It's all ironic given that, for so many years, the Government has been falling over itself to sign up for the Kyoto Protocol, and to tax emitters of harmless carbon dioxide gas.

As far back as 1965, the then Auckland Air Pollution Research Committee recognised motor vehicles as a major source of air pollutants in the region. Decades went by before anything was done.

In 1986, the lead content of petrol used in New Zealand was a startling 0.84 grams a litre, one of the highest levels in the world. Its residues were detectable even on country roadsides.

Given that lead is a dangerous toxin that acts on the human nervous system, the Government eventually responded to public concern.

In 1987 the lead level in petrol was reduced to 0.45 grams a litre. In August of the following year, the Minister for the Environment, Geoffrey Palmer, announced the Government's decision to set January 1996 as the target date for the elimination of lead in petrol in New Zealand, decades behind the rest of the developed world.

Lead has now gone from petrol, but other poisons remain. Exhaust emissions produce large quantities of particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.

Diesel engines are inclined to be dirtier than petrol engines. They produce a disproportionate number of small particles that penetrate deep into the lungs.

The reason for the inaction is puzzling. A string of Governments have consciously set out to develop and protect a fresh, green image of the country and promote it overseas.

One Environment Minister after another has proclaimed support for international treaties on environmental standards.

But on the matter of air quality, they appear to have been preoccupied with the carbon dioxide emissions issue. In broad environmental terms, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and has few, if any, harmful effects.

Perhaps our various Governments have been distracted by their own curious strain of green propaganda.

Strict vehicle emission controls have long been in place over most of the developed world. The difficulty in New Zealand following suit has for a long time been reasonably small.

The reason is that most motor vehicles sold here are imported from countries which meet and enforce strict emission standards. Emission control devices could be factory-fitted as a matter of course.

Paradoxically, we have been going the other way, by importing used vehicles from countries that no longer want them, mainly because they no longer meet strict emission standards. All over the world, older vehicles make more mess.

It is ironic, too, that a large proportion of these old vehicles are the diesel-fuelled four-wheel drives - the urban assault vehicles that so many New Zealanders have come to love.

The number of cars on the nation's roads has mushroomed since the Auckland Air Pollution Research Committee recognised motor vehicles as a major source of air pollutants some 40 years ago.

While we wait for legislation, the problem of vehicle emissions will worsen as cars continue to spew ever-increasing quantities of poisons into the air unchecked.

* Chris de Freitas is an associate professor at Auckland University's school of geography and environmental science.