Choking off the funding

• Published date: 31 July 2021

Glenn Blundell is just back from an exercise class. He is 58 and lives in a modest retirement village in friendly, laid-back Mosgiel. Right now he is standing in his lounge, talking to a friend who has popped over.

It sounds idyllic.

But that is far from reality.

Sticking closer to Blundell than a blood brother is an oxygen cylinder strapped to a small, two-wheeled frame with a long handle. From the scuba-sized tank a snaking tube forks at Blundell’s chin, loops around his ears and enters his nostrils. It is his 24-7 life line.

‘‘I’ve got COPD,’’ he says matter-of-factly about the irreversible chronic inflammatory disease that obstructs airflow from his lungs.

On a good day that tank, that tube, ensures enough oxygen is flowing through his failing lungs to keep him mobile and alive. But when cold, calm conditions trap fireplace pollutants in the Mosgiel air, Blundell is in trouble.

‘‘You can smell it when it’s not good,’’ he says.

‘‘That means I can’t go outside because the oxygen levels in my blood go down.’’

It was like that last week. Mid-week, dropping temperatures encouraged people to light their fires while an inversion layer trapped the minute, smoky, carbon particles in the air that hung in the town basin. On the Wednesday, the pollution pushed above the national air safety guidelines, the fourth time it had done that in Mosgiel during the past two months. The next day it almost breached again.

Blundell had not noticed and had gone out for some of the regular exercise vital for people with COPD.

‘‘I walked to the car but had to stop and take a breather,’’ he says.

He is not the only one concerned.

Local and national experts in air quality, domestic heating and public health are shocked by the Otago Regional Council’s decision to halt its air quality improvement work for four years. They are dismayed the council has made that decision despite the fact that some Otago towns rank among the worst for air quality in New Zealand, the region is already lagging behind on air quality improvements and some citizens’ health will suffer (perhaps resulting in hospitalisation, if not worse).

Otago is regularly ‘‘top of the pops’’ for poor air quality, Dr Ian Longley says.

The principal air quality scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says Otago towns, including Arrowtown, Alexandra, Cromwell and Milton, consistently record the most breaches of guidelines for maximum safe levels of air pollution.

Air pollution, based on monitoring PM10 airborne particles (0.01mm or smaller), is supposed to be kept below a daily average of 50 micrograms per cubic metre (50µg/m3).

Last year, Arrowtown exceeded the air pollution safety...