The Australian Clean Air Standard Is Being Used by the Queensland State Government As a Licence to Pollute

Submission from: Michael Kane on behalf of Clean Air Queensland

18thNovember, 2014

To the chairperson, with reference to the following:

Select Committee into Certain Aspects of Queensland Government Administration related to Commonwealth Government Affairs.

The Australian Clean Air Standard is being used by the Queensland State Government as a licence to pollute.

The Queensland coal industry, the Queensland Resources Council and the Queensland State Government are cooperating to apply a dangerously lax regulatory frame work for the massive expansion of the coal industry which potentially has widespread and severe health implications for many heavily populated centres, towns and rural communities in Queensland.

In this submission Clean Air Queensland will focus on the misuse of the Australian Clean Air Standard http://www.environment.gov.au/topics/environment-protection/air- quality/air-quality-standards which under the current and previous government in Queensland could potentially cause up to 800 additional deaths and 7400 extra hospitalisations from government sanctioned pollution regulations in Queensland.

Clean Air Queensland believes the current regulatory framework for Queensland pollution standards, as they are applied to the mining and other industries, is a contravention of the International International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The failure to protect people from industrial pollution like coal dust is in breach of this convention and the misuse of the Australian Clean Air standards is tantamount to wilful and culpable negligence by the Queensland government and the coal industry.

Compounding the problem in Queensland is the recent relaxation of political and electoral funding of political parties in Queensland by corporations, particularly mining and resource companies and the demonstrably close relationship of New Hope Coal and associated companies who have current applications for extremely polluting projects pending before the Queensland government.

Clean Air Queensland

Clean Air Queensland is an organisation concerned with the health impacts of particulate pollution on rural, residential and urban communities. Our particular focus is the impacts of the coal industry in Queensland. Currently health impacts from particulate pollution sources like coal dust are largely unregulated and governed by unenforced or unenforceable guidelines.

We are concerned that the exponential growth of the coal industry in Queensland which is increasingly occurring close to established rural, urban and metropolitan communities. We believe that the present Australian Clean Air guidelines guidelines do not adequately address the serious health impacts posed to communities who are being increasingly exposed to industrial pollution as the coal industry moves into populated regions in Queensland.

National Pollution Inventory – Queensland coal tops the chart.

The nation’s air quality has declined dramatically in the past decade and coal mining has been identified as the biggest source of harmful respiratory particles in our air.

Coal mining was identified as the leading source of particle pollution contributing 380,000 tonnes of the total 830,000 tonnes of tiny dust particles that can be breathed in, known as PM 10, emitted nationally in 2012-13.

In 2014 The Australian Government National Pollutant Inventory report found Queensland is the most polluted state in terms of the levels of particulate matter with eight of the nation’s top ten particle emitting coal mines located in the state, the report should sound an urgent warning bell on the need for greater controls on air pollution.

Particle pollution contributes to a range of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses yet we have no national uniform legislation to protect the very air we breathe.

Even getting coal trains covered to reduce particle pollution in Queensland has proved too difficult for our legislators and the dust from stockpiles of uncovered coal waiting for export blows freely over populated areas.

For perspective, the report found that motor vehicles collectively contributed 12,000 tonnes of these particulates every year, a figure dwarfed by the emissions from the coal industry.

Health Impacts

Health impacts from particulate pollution like coal dust are now recognised to pose a severe health threat to the Australian community and particulate pollution is an acknowledged leading cause of death and disease in Australia. The Australian Medical Association, the World Health Organisation and leading academics in the fields of air pollution and health impacts of particulate pollution are increasingly warning community and governments about the deadly consequences of poor regulation.

It is Clean Air Queensland’s firm belief that the present PM10 24-hour standard of 50ug/m3 is being used as a licence to pollute by the coal industry and the Queensland government rather than the standard acting as a regulatory tool to place downward pressure on particulate pollution.

Clean Air Queensland has correspondence from Michael Roche (Queensland Minerals Council), Lawrence Springborg (Minister for Health) and Scott Emerson (Minister for Transport and Main Roads) where the relevant government minister and coal industry representatives cite the level of pollution from coal stockpiles, mines and uncovered trains as within the accepted limits of the Australian clean air standard.

These assertions that coal dust pollution in heavily inhabited area’s is safe and not of concern ignores the fact that coal dust pollution from the operation of coal stockpiles, coal transport and coal mining is intermittent and that the health effects are cumulative.

There is no safe threshold for exposure to particulate pollution like PM10, PM2.5 and PM1, Clean Air Queensland believes that the standard should also incorporate enforceable provisions for mitigating health impacts on people living close to coal mines and coal industry infrastructure pollution point sources.

(See Appendix A.2 for detailed assessments of impacts on health of communities living near coal dust point sources such as Acland, Queensland. Authored by John Sheridan, Doctors for the Environment, Australia. 21/8/12)

It is clear that the current standards of permissible particulate pollution allowed near population centres is already causing significant health and cost pressures on the community.

For instance if pollution in our largest population centres was allowed to increase to the daily average or even close to the present Australian clean air guidelines of 50 micrograms of PM10 pollution per cubic meter averaged over 24hours then we could expect a substantial increase in premature deaths, increased disease and hospitalisations.

A recent study in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health found that if average daily pollution levels were allowed to increase to just below the current Australian National Clean Air standards then we could expect an extra 6000 deaths and 20 000 emergency hospital admissions annually in Australia from preventable particulate pollution.

Clearly the present Australian pollution standards are inadequate to prevent serious impacts on community health.

I have attached paper by Professor Adrian Barnett from the Queensland University of Technology which was published in 2014 in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health. The tables below are based on data from Dr Barnett’s study.

Table 1: Estimated number of additional annual deaths (all ages) by increasing current pollution levels to just below the national standards.

Cities: Brisbane Melbourne Sydney Additional Deaths 800 2600 2600

Additional Hospitalisations 7400 5800 7500

(Graphs extracted from Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 1st of October 2014. Dr Adrian Barnett. Study printed in full at the end of this document)

Table 2: Estimated number of additional annual emergency hospital admissions by increasing current pollution levels to just below the national standards. Estimates by cities, diseases, age groups and pollutants. Estimates rounded to the nearest 100.

Cities: Brisbane Melbourne Sydney 7400 5800 7500 Diseases: Arrhythmia Cardiac Ischemic Respiratory failure heart disease 300 3500 1900 15100 Age groups (years): 0 1–4 5–14 15–64 65+ 4500 9000 500 1600 5200 Pollutants: CO NO2 PM10 PM2.5 SO2 4200 2900 1100 1500 11,100

CO = carbon monoxide; NO2 = nitrogen dioxide; PM10 = particulate matter with a diameter less than 10 micrometres; PM2.5 = particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometres; SO2 = sulphur dioxide

(Graphs extracted from Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 1st of October 2014. Dr Adrian Barnett. Study printed in full at the end of this document)

Summary

There is a substantial body of science-based evidence that using the Australian Clean Air standard to regulate health impacts of particulate pollution like coal dust is at best ineffective and at worst a deliberate misuse of the standard which is potentially causing the deaths and hospitalisations of thousands of Queenslanders.

It is of deep concern to the membership groups of Clean Air Queensland that the current Federal government is considering handing over substantial legislative powers to assess mining development to the Queensland government.

The Queensland government is wilfully ignoring the human and environmental impacts that the coal industry is causing in Queensland and is making every effort to further weaken an already ineffective and potentially corrupting approval’s process and regulatory framework.

Even though the Queensland coal industry is by far the worst source of industrial air pollution in the state of Queensland, efforts to improve the industries’ pollution mitigation strategy has fallen on deaf ears and the coal industry continues to move ever closer to population centres like Toowoomba, Brisbane, Bowen, Gladstone, Jondaryan and Acland to name but a few of the communities currently adversely affected.

The ineffective and unenforceable regulatory regime is bad enough. But the institutionalised corruption inherent in the Queensland environmental impact and approvals process and the recent loss of legislative rights to object is making the situation untenable for sustainable development and ever harder to protect community health and environments.

Political party donations rules in Queensland allow mining companies to be major financial political party donors. These same companies may also have pending project applications before the government. This presents a dangerous situation where political parties have become reliant on donations from companies that have direct interest in major planning, regulatory decisions and project approvals.

The Queensland government have some of the most opaque and inadequate laws governing political donations, corruption and democratic systems in the Commonwealth and have demonstrably failed to protect Queenslanders from inappropriate mining development and lack even basic standards of accountability and review.

This potential for corruption and failure of governance is risking the health of Queenslanders and the long term sustainability of our environment and economy.

A.1

It’s safe to say there’s no safe level of air pollution Associate Professor Adrian G Barnett, Queensland University of Technology

Published October 1, 2014 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health

Outdoor air pollution is a killer. A recent report from the World Health Organization estimated that 3.7 million deaths per year are due to outdoor air pollution. Most of these deaths are in low and middle income countries, with China being the country that often springs to mind. However, Australia still has a relatively big air pollution problem with an estimated 3,000 deaths per year [1].

Extreme events such dust storms, bushfires and the recent coal fire in Morwell dramatically increase pollution levels (for days or weeks) and are also very hazardous to health [2, 3]. Australian governments in the last 30 years have committed to improving air quality, and policies have been discussed and implemented with the aim of creating cleaner air.

One key policy measure is the National Environment Protection Measures for air quality. These set standards for six important outdoor pollutants. Their key goal is to create “ambient air quality that allows for the adequate protection of human health and wellbeing”. One of the six standards is for particulate air pollution with a diameter less than 10 micrometres or less (known as PM10), and allows a maximum daily average of 50 µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre).

For most people these numbers will not mean much, and certainly the public and the media struggle to understand the standards. The standards are often interpreted to mean that particulate matter levels below 50 µg/m3 are safe, and those above 50 µg/m3 are potentially dangerous. This is completely wrong. To demonstrate how wrong this is we can predict what would happen if the current average pollution levels in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were increased to just below the standards. I used estimates of health effects from highly cited studies of the risks of outdoor pollution exposure in children and the elderly [4-6]. Combining the pollutant increases, relative risks and current daily numbers of deaths and emergency hospital admissions gives annual increases of 2600 deaths and 7500 admissions in Sydney, 2600 deaths and 5,800 admissions in Melbourne, and 800 deaths and 7,400 admissions in Brisbane.

Further breakdowns of these numbers by age groups, diseases and pollutants are in Table 1. The numbers show the massive health problems we could expect across Australia if pollution levels were increased to what some see as a “safe” level. These numbers use the same association between pollution and health as per the published studies, but extrapolate beyond the typical Australian pollution levels. There may be some double counting in these estimates, as some of the pollutants are positively correlated. However, these numbers do not cover all the health effects of air pollution as I did not consider pollutants such as ultrafine particles, and I did not include the full range of health effects including reduced lung function [7] and preterm births [8]. Misuse of the standards

It is understandable that the public and the media misinterpret the standards to mean safe or dangerous. What is hard to understand is when the safe or dangerous interpretation is used by professionals, such as environmental scientists employed to estimate the health impacts of new infrastructure. Such misinterpretation happens often. For example, recent environmental reports on the likely increases in air pollution from the East–West road link in Melbourne and trains carrying coal in Queensland made just such a conclusion. Locals who are concerned about the potential health effects have found it difficult to get past the argument that the increases are below the standards and therefore everything is fine. But any new project that increases air pollution will mean an increase in health effects. Instead of using a simplistic (and wrong) threshold argument, studies should be based on a proper cost-benefit analysis, where the increase in health effects due to increased exposure is quantified. The increased health effects can then be balanced against the economic and societal benefit of the new road, tunnel or industry. The health costs will depend on how many people are exposed and what the likely increase in pollution is. Policy makers can use these numbers to make an informed decision based on the merits and costs of the project. Such cost-benefit analyses are not difficult to do.

Changes also need to be made to the National Environment Protection Measures documentation and web site to prominently state that the standards should not be used to judge whether individual projects are safe or dangerous. A report on the NEPM standards recognised that compliance with the standards, “may not achieve the desired outcome of ‘adequate protection’” [9]. However, this was published back in 2011, but the documentation has still not been changed, and the standards are still regularly being misused. Changes could also be made to better communicate the risks of air pollution to the public. For example, the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency gives hourly updates on air quality for 16 sites across the state

(http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/air/bulletins/aqbhour.asp). Whilst such speedy and free information is commendable the pollution numbers are hard for non- specialists to interpret. This was clear during the recent fire at Morwell where the particulate matter numbers peaked at over550 ug/m3. To help interpret the numbers the Victorian EPA has categorised and colour-coded the results into five categories from “very good” to “very poor”. However, these categories still do not have enough meaning, particularly when people want to know if they should change their behaviour in order to reduce their exposure. To help people interpret these categories the estimated health impacts could be added. For example, the category of “fair” for particulate matter (PM2.5) could be augmented with the information of an expected extra 2–5 hospital admissions per 100,000 people exposed per week, whilst for “very poor” the numbers would be 10 or more admissions. Air pollution can be complex. There are multiple gases and metals that are measured on unfamiliar scales. It is often difficult to measure and many pollutants interact with the weather and measurements just 100 metres apart can be very different. However, the epidemiology of air pollution is simple: when average levels increase the average health effects increase and this association has been shown repeatedly around the world.

I have lost count of the number of government commissioned environmental reports that have used the safe or dangerous fallacy. This practice should have ended years ago and proper cost-benefit studies should be undertaken for the current massive projects that could impact on many people’s lives such as the expansion of coal trains in residential areas and the East–West road link in Melbourne.

Table 1: Estimated number of additional annual deaths (all ages) by increasing current pollution levels to just below the national standards. Estimates rounded to the nearest 100.

10 micrometres; PM2.5 = particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometres; SO2 = sulphur dioxide

REFERENCES 1. Begg, S., et al., The burden of disease and injury in Australia 2003, in AIHW cat. no. PHE 82. 2007, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: Canberra. 2. Merrifield, A., et al., Health effects of the September 2009 dust storm in Sydney, Australia: did emergency department visits and hospital admissions increase? Environmental Health, 2013. 12(1): p. 32. 3. Morgan, G., et al., Effects of Bushfire Smoke on Daily Mortality and Hospital Admissions in Sydney, Australia. Epidemiology, 2010. 21(1): p. 47-55. 4. Barnett, A.G., et al., The effects of air pollution on hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease in elderly people in Australian and New Zealand cities. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2006. 114(7): p. 1018-1023. 5. Barnett, A.G., et al., Air pollution and child respiratory health - A case-crossover study in Australia and new Zealand. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2005. 171(11): p. 1272-1278. 6. Simpson, R., et al., The short-term effects of air pollution on daily mortality in four Australian cities. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2005. 29(3): p. 205-212. 7. Gauderman, W.J., et al., Effect of exposure to traffic on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age: a cohort study. The Lancet, 2007. 369(9561): p. 571-577. 8. Ritz, B., et al., Ambient Air Pollution and Preterm Birth in the Environment and Pregnancy Outcomes Study at the University of California, Los Angeles. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2007. 166(9): p. 1045-1052. 9. National Environment Protection Council, National Environment Protection (Ambient Air Quality) Measure Review. 2011: National Environment Protection Council Service Corporation.

A.2

Health issues relating to the New Hope Coal Mine, Acland

No Australian studies have been done on the health in communities living in the vicinity of open cut coal mines.

A West Virginia study (2008) and a Scottish study (2009) that compared mining areas with matched non-mining areas indicated an increased prevalence of the following conditions in mining areas:  cardiopulmonary disease  chronic obstructive airways disease  hypertension  heart disease  kidney disease The Scottish study suggested, in addition, an increased prevalence of cancer.

The above findings are broadly consistent with the disease spectrum expected from exposure to PM2.5 (very fine particulate material) and to nitrogen dioxide NO2

PM2.5: (there is no threshold level to the ill-effects of PM2.5)  asthma  chronic obstructive airways disease  cardiac arrhythmias  acute myocardial infarction  congestive cardiac failure  ischaemic stroke  lung cancer  increased infant mortality  impaired lung development

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2):  asthma  chronic obstructive airways disease  cardiac arrhythmias  ischaemic stroke  increased infant mortality

Reports of ill-health in residents close to New Acland mine:  chronic ill health in children, especially from respiratory disease  asthma  weeping eyes and noses  nose bleeds  dizziness  headaches  fatigue  anxiety and depression  loss of social cohesion Major concerns voiced by residents adjacent New Acland Mine:  coal dust  NO2 incidents  noise  blast vibrations  light pollution  tank water contamination Pollutants and agents of concern requiring monitoring:  Dust*  PM10*  PM2.5  NO2  SO2  Heavy metals  Noise*  Blast vibrations and infrasound*  Light pollution  Tank water pollution (coal dust and heavy metals) * limited monitoring others not monitored

Current monitoring problems:  Poor siteing of instrumentation  infrequency of monitoring  lack of concurrent weather data  questionable veracity of reports  lack of transparency with community

National Pollution Inventory record of New Acland Mine 2009/10:  PM10: 3,800,000Kg pa  PM2.5: 65,000Kg pa  NO2: 960,000Kg pa  VOC’s: 79.000Kg pa

Other National Pollution Inventory findings: Several fold increases in pollution (2-14) by a number of heavy metals and other toxins between when the mine was producing 2.0 Mtpa coal in 2004/5 to now when it is producing 4.8 Mtpa. Far larger differences exist for these same pollutants between Oakey (high levels) and Pittsworth (low) which is more distant from the mine. Any mine expansion would greatly exacerbate problems.

Recommendations:  Health Impact Assessments, done my medical experts, need to become a major element in Environmental Impact Assessment process.  Need for continuous real time monitoring of PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2 coupled with wind speed and direction measurements as is currently occurring with the Upper Hunter Air Quality Monitoring Network in NSW. Reliable monitoring of sound, vibration and infrasound in mine vicinity also needs improvement. Monitoring should be at the expense of the mines.  Greatly improved coal dust suppression is needed especially at the Jondaryan rail coal loading facility and of rail wagons. This needs to be accompanied by greatly improved independent monitoring  DERM needs to establish a transparent, responsive and accountable portal for public complaints about environmental breaches. DERM needs to act decisively on all breaches. John Sheridan for DEA 21/8/12