In this week’s feature, ATN investigates the growing issue of transport pollution and what is being done to solve it
It’s the silent issue across many Australian capital cities. With the transport industry focused on emissions and decarbonisation, air pollution is also becoming a major issue for the sector.
A recent report by the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) found that approximately 11,000 Australians die prematurely from transport pollution every year. This is nearly 10 times more than the number of road crash victims in 2022, which sat at 1,194.
“Not only are Australians regularly exposed to levels of air pollution that exceed national targets, but our national targets themselves don’t meet international air quality targets set by the World Health Organization,” EDO Policy and law reform director Rachel Walmsley says.
The report, Toxic Transport: How Our Pollution Laws Are Failing to Protect Our Health, found that air pollution isn’t being monitored properly by Australian governments.
While laws are in place, they aren’t being aligned with the World Health Organisation (WHO) air quality guidelines. Testing regimes only measure ambient air pollution solutions while not all testing sites measure the same pollutants, with testing being poorly positioned and failing to capture the concentration of transport pollution.
Sydney and Melbourne are the two major cities hit hardest by air pollution. The report discovered that residents in those cities are exposed to transport pollution levels that are harmful to children health, pregnant people, the elderly, people with disability and with chronic disease.
Suburbs in these cities are also known as ‘sacrifice zones’, where residents are subjected to higher levels of air pollution and hazards. An example of this is near the Port of Melbourne, where an average of 11,000 trucks pass by residents each day. In that area, the adolescent asthma rate is 50 per cent higher than the state average, while the hospital admission rate for three to 19-year-olds is 70 per cent higher than the Australian average.
The report says that other issues in Victoria include the positioning of childcare centres in the state. A 2019 study uncovered that a quarter of all childcare centres in the state are located within 150 metres of a major road, leading to young children being exposed to unnecessary levels of transport pollution and associated health impacts.
“Children are particularly vulnerable to exposure to transport pollution because of the adverse impacts on lung development – yet they continue to be put in harm’s way and we’re not addressing the problem,” Walmsley says.
However, the Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 strategy provides that the location of ‘sensitive uses’ services, including childcare centres, requires careful consideration. It also found that buffer distances between these services and pollution emissions need to be implemented and managed.
The report says that despite it not being implemented yet, it is an example of applying a ‘whole-of-government’ and ‘health-in-all-policies’ approaches to these problems. These approaches are part of recommendation number seven put forth by the report into solving air pollution.
Recommendation number seven suggests that Australian governments need to implement measures, strategies and policies that seek long-term reduction of transport pollution.
Along with that recommendation the report suggests to state and territory governments, along with regulators, the need to legislate objectives, guidelines and policies to support an exposure reduction framework. It also puts forth implementing Australian Fuel Efficiency Standards no later than July 2024.
The first recommendation of the report proposes that the National Environment Protection (Ambient Air Quality) measure needs to be revised. The report puts forward other recommendations for the measure, including establishing population exposure threshold targets, new monitoring standards for air pollutants along with amending the National Environmental Protection Council Act 1994 to ensure that it is implemented.
“We’re calling on governments to adopt an exposure reduction framework that protects Australians from harmful transport pollution for better health and to fulfil our global climate commitments,” Walmsley says.
Despite the report’s findings, National Road Transport Association (NatRoad) CEO Warren Clark says that the industry is looking at transport pollution in detail along with finding ways to reduce these carbon emissions. He says there is one major issue that is holding it back.
“All our vehicles will come from Europe or the US and they’re relying on that supply to come from those particular areas, so we’ve got to be a bit careful on the transition,” Clark told ATN.
“The issues are real, none of us are denying that, and we want to do something about it, but the key is the transition.”
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| NatRoad CEO Warren Clark |
While transition is an issue, Clark says that there are things taking place to reduce this pollution. An article by Transport for NSW found that heavy duty diesel trucks built from 2013 emit only eight per cent of particles emitted by vehicles from 1996 in NSW. Cars built since 2013 also emit only three per cent of the oxides of nitrogen than vehicles built in 1976 in NSW do.
In the past 13 years, Clark says that the truck industry has continued to deliver reductions of between 40 to 80 per cent in these vehicles, while freight tasks have increased by 100 per cent during that period.
This will continue to drop, according to Clark, with the Euro VI vehicle set to be introduced in Australia soon. Clark says that with this new vehicle emissions limit, peroxide and nitrogen will drop by 77 to 80 per cent along with mass emission limits dropping by 50 to 66 per cent.
“The federal government has made the step to mandate Euro VI by phasing it in over the next 12 months from November 1 to 2024,” Clark says.
“This is something that NatRoad and the manufacturers have been looking at for years and it will go a long way to reducing some of the nasties that we currently have.”