Interior Health’s senior medical health officer is not surprised by a new report which says as many as 21,000 Canadians will die prematurely this year because of the effects of air pollution.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. As a matter of fact I think over the last few years there has been a significant expansion of our understanding of the impacts of poor air quality on health,” Dr. Paul Hasselback said.

He added that gone are the days when people could assume air quality was fine until an alert saying otherwise was issued.

The Canadian Medical Association released the report, No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution, on Wednesday.

“With the start of the Olympics in Beijing, much has been made about the poor air quality in China and the effect it is having on our athletes,” said CMA president Dr. Brian Day. “But we have a serious home-grown pollution problem right here and Canadians, ranging from the very young to the very old, are paying the price.”

The report found that while most of this year’s air pollution-related deaths will be the result of chronic exposure over many years, almost 3,000 cases will be from acute short-term exposure.

It predicts that by 2031, almost 90,000 people in Canada will die from the acute effects of air pollution and 710,000 will die from long-term exposure.

Air pollution is known to have negative effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. The CMA report says 42 per cent of air pollution-related acute premature deaths will be the result of cardiovascular disease.

It expects the number of premature deaths related to chronic exposure to air pollution in Canada to rise 83 per cent between 2008 and 2031.

During that same time, the accumulated negative economic impact of air pollution is predicted to go from $10 billion to over $300 billion.

The report says there will be 306 acute premature deaths related to air pollution in B.C. this year, along with 1,158 hospital admissions and 8,763 emergency department visits.

By 2031 those totals are expected to rise to 585 acute premature deaths, 1,985 hospital admissions and 14,975 emergency department visits, further stressing our health care system.

Hasselback said residents of the Okanagan are relatively lucky when it comes to air quality.

However, “we live in a valley and that valley is subjected at certain times to what meteorologists call inversions and it traps poor air quality,” he said, “And we keep adding to that by using vehicles, burning wood fuels (and emitting) other types of pollutants that get into the air.”

On top of the pollution generated locally, pollutants from far away can travel here and get trapped, as happened recently with the forest fires burning in California.

People with existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions, as well as the elderly and young children are most at risk from air pollution.

Hasselback suggested people become familiar with the air quality index at www.airhealthbc.ca and at what point poor air quality affects their health.

“And for those who do have chronic diseases (they should) have discussions with their health care provider on what, if any changes need to be made to their treatment regimes to manage poor air quality days,” he said.

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http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/air/vehicle/

Interior Health’s senior medical health officer is not surprised by a new report which says as many as 21,000 Canadians will die prematurely this year because of the effects of air pollution.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. As a matter of fact I think over the last few years there has been a significant expansion of our understanding of the impacts of poor air quality on health,” Dr. Paul Hasselback said.

He added that gone are the days when people could assume air quality was fine until an alert saying otherwise was issued.

The Canadian Medical Association released the report, No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution, on Wednesday.

“With the start of the Olympics in Beijing, much has been made about the poor air quality in China and the effect it is having on our athletes,” said CMA president Dr. Brian Day.

“But we have a serious home-grown pollution problem right here and Canadians, ranging from the very young to the very old, are paying the price.”

The report found that while most of this year’s air pollution-related deaths will be the result of chronic exposure over many years, almost 3,000 cases will be from acute short-term exposure.

It predicts that by 2031, almost 90,000 people in Canada will die from the acute effects of air pollution and 710,000 will die from long-term exposure.

Air pollution is known to have negative effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

The CMA report says 42 per cent of air pollution-related acute premature deaths will be the result of cardiovascular disease.

It expects the number of premature deaths related to chronic exposure to air pollution in Canada to rise 83 per cent between 2008 and 2031.

During that same time, the accumulated negative economic impact of air pollution is predicted to go from $10 billion to over $300 billion.

The report says there will be 306 acute premature deaths related to air pollution in B.C. this year, along with 1,158 hospital admissions and 8,763 emergency department visits.

By 2031 those totals are expected to rise to 585 acute premature deaths, 1,985 hospital admissions and 14,975 emergency department visits, further stressing our health care system.

Hasselback said residents of the Okanagan are relatively lucky when it comes to air quality.

However, “we live in a valley and that valley is subjected at certain times to what meteorologists call inversions and it traps poor air quality,” he said.

“And we keep adding to that by using vehicles, burning wood fuels (and emitting) other types of pollutants that get into the air.”

On top of the pollution generated locally, pollutants from far away can travel here and get trapped, as happened recently with the forest fires burning in California.

People with existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions, as well as the elderly and young children are most at risk from air pollution.

Hasselback suggested people become familiar with the air quality index at www.airhealthbc.ca and at what point poor air quality affects their health.

“And for those who do have chronic diseases (they should) have discussions with their health care provider on what, if any changes need to be made to their treatment regimes to manage poor air quality days,” he said.

Conclusions reviewed: good work has been done; reduction strategies to be implemented but many rely on senior government financial and regulatory support; significant support from senior government seems to be forthcoming;
coordination with other airsheds in province on education program and emission reductions in specific sectors sill reduce the burden on the Coalition; goals and performance measures can be fine-tuned; most emission reduction strategies can and should be implemented valley-wide and doing so would benefit the entire airshed.

2.0 AIR QUALITY IN THE CENTRAL OKANAGAN
The Central Okanagan’s air quality compares favourably to that of other similar sized Canadian cities.

However, we still do not meet our ambient air quality objectives all of the time. Air quality monitoring in the Central Okanagan reveals that of the six air pollutants measured; only particulate matter exceeded provincial air quality objectives.

Main Pollutants
What are the main pollutants? The two air pollutants of greatest concern in the Central Okanagan are Particulate Matter (PM) and Ozone (O3), because they are widespread and can have serious impacts on our health and environment. There are also several other pollutants to be concerned about, which are described in Table 1.

Note* Central Okanagan Regional District is NOT on this list?

Metro Vancouver has clearly indicated that improving visibility is important by making it one of only three goals in its 2005 AQMP. As Metro Vancouver has regulatory authority for air quality in its region, it could adopt a visibility objective or index. In all other jurisdictions of B.C., the MOE has regulatory authority and therefore it would need to adopt a provincial visibility objective or index that other communities could adopt in their airshed plans. An example visibility goal could easily be added to Step 5 of the online air quality planning tool (http://www.airqualityplanning.ca/). Notwithstanding their lack of regulatory authority, all communities could adopt a visibility goal in their airshed plans.
A visibility management framework also needs to consider outreach, integrating with other air quality goals, and monitoring and data analysis. As discussed in Section 3.3, adopting a format for the visibility index that is similar to the AQHI and potentially integrating it with the AQHI would likely accelerate public acceptance. In any case, use of a website to inform the public of the visibility goal and to track progress is highly recommended. Consideration could also be given to providing this information to other media (newspapers, television etc.) as is done currently for the Air Quality Index. Public perception is an important component of any visibility goal. Cameras could be used real-time to give the public access to visibility information for a given location. On the web, a discussion of the links between visibility, measured parameters, and photos could be a useful tool.
Since a number of air quality regulations and goals already exist, and these will be complementary to any visibility management program, visibility goals should be integrated with other air quality goals, especially PM2.5. Reductions in other pollutants can have co-benefits for visibility and should be included. In particular, a visibility monitoring network could be added to existing networks with other air pollutants to meet a broader range of goals. Speciated PM2.5 data, collocated with meteorology and other measurements, will be critical to help regulators and analysts understand the impacts of specific components and sources on visibility. In this way, existing air quality regulations, monitoring and analyses can be leveraged with the visibility framework.
Results from these additional monitoring efforts will need to be analyzed to both better understand the nature of impaired visibility and to justify them. The new data should be examined in the context of other similar data collected throughout B.C. and the rest of Canada, as well as being “mined” to better understand the potential causes of haze. Specific analyses could include reconstruction of visibility extinction, source apportionment, trajectory analysis, and comparison with emission inventory/modelling analyses.

7.4 IMPLEMENT THE VISIBILITY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
The visibility management program should be integrated with existing air quality management systems in the province such as the community airshed planning process. Communities with airshed plans in place and those that are in the process of developing a plan could incorporate visibility goals using the form and metric developed for the province.

Summary of Public Comment: Provincial Ambient Air Quality Criteria for PM2.5 Ministry Intentions Paper
Posted April 25, 2008
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/air/airquality/aq_criteria_pm25/pm25criteria_summary.pdf
The Ministry of Environment intends to establish provincial ambient-air-quality criteria for PM2.5. A key part of this process is stakeholder consultation, based on an intentions paper released in January 2008. This report summarizes the stakeholder submissions. A final decision on the proposed criteria is expected later this year.