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Setting air quality standards: a case study of the Australian National Environment Protection Measure for Ambient Air Quality
Author(s) -
Beer Tom
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
environmetrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.68
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-095X
pISSN - 1180-4009
DOI - 10.1002/1099-095x(200009/10)11:5<499::aid-env413>3.0.co;2-u
Subject(s) - national ambient air quality standards , air quality index , environmental planning , clean air act , legislation , environmental protection , environmental quality , environmental impact assessment , agency (philosophy) , environmental science , environmental resource management , business , environmental health , air pollution , political science , geography , law , meteorology , medicine , philosophy , chemistry , organic chemistry , epistemology
Australia does not have a federal environmental agency such as the one in the United States. State environmental authorities are responsible for setting environmental standards. Australia has set up a National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) to enact uniform environmental standards by having each State Parliament pass identical legislation, known as a National Environment Protection Measure (NEPM), once it has been agreed by the NEPC. The work for the first NEPM, the National Environment Protection Measure on Ambient Air Quality began in mid‐1996. The NEPM was intended to provide standards, and a monitoring and reporting protocol for six air pollutants, known as criteria pollutants—namely, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, particulate matter and lead. Development of the NEPM was in the hands of a Project Team composed of environmental regulators from the States, and from the Commonwealth. The Project Team decided on a risk assessment process that involved six consultancies: Health review; Air quality data collation; Exposure assessment; Health Risk assessment; Social Impact assessment; Measuring and reporting protocols. Both the process and the results of the process were more contentious than originally envisaged, as demonstrated by the release of a notional NEPM at first (instead of a draft NEPM). A draft NEPM was released in late 1997. This paper reviews three possible methods of determining risk‐based environmental standards and examines some different ways in which the results of a risk analysis can be used as a scientific input into the process of setting environmental standards. It is concluded that any future Air Quality NEPM process needs to ensure: (i) prior stakeholder agreement on the methodology and its application; (ii) consultancies are undertaken on a collaborative, information sharing basis, rather than on a linear, non‐interactive basis, whereby the output of one consultancy is the input to another consultancy, with both consultancies conducted in isolation; (iii) a transparent basis for the conversion of scientific and economic information to numerical standards; (iv) sufficient time is allowed for the technical work to be undertaken, and for the review panels to assess it. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.