Block 8: Environmental Issues and Public Health - Air Pollution Chapter 12: Air Quality Management, the Environmental Impact Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment

The management of Air Quality is a multifaceted activity.

The essential elements of an Air Quality Management System:

An air quality management system needs to address the complexity of the relationship between the sources of air pollution and the exposure of people, crops, vegetation, livestock and physical infrastructure to the air pollutants, and the human health and economic consequences of this exposure. A complex set of factors relates the sources of air pollution to ambient concentrations (measured as time-averaged values) and the exposure of receptors - people, buildings, crops and animals. These factors include meteorology and the atmospheric processes of dispersion, chemical and physical transformation, and deposition of pollutants onto surfaces.

Key elements of an Air Quality Management System (AQMS) are

• Ambient Air Quality Standards,
• Source Emission Standards (also called emission Limit Values),
• the preparation and maintenance of an Emission Inventory,
• Ambient Air Quality Monitoring,
• Meteorological Data and
• Air Quality Modelling and an
• Air quality and air pollution control regulatory framework.

A coherent and effective regulatory system (AQMS) would include a process for the setting air quality standards and for setting specific time-bound air quality objectives, and would be capable of gathering the necessary air quality information and using the permitting or licensing system and the necessary technical and legal resources to give effect to plans to meet the specified air quality targets.

Decades of regulatory history (for example, Sweden, the US and the UK, and other economically developed countries) have shown that an effective Air Quality Management System requires both source emission and ambient air type controls. The management of air quality will remain a futile exercise unless a comprehensive source emission control system is in place.

At present, we do not have either type of control system in place in South Africa. The current permit system for scheduled processes has severe limitations. While a licensing system (for ‘Scheduled Processes) is in place there are no Source Emission Standards that can be used as the basis for issuing licenses. Mobile sources (vehicle emissions) are largely unregulated at present.

Public access to all relevant information pertinent to the Air Quality Management System is an essential component of the access to environmental rights.

The objective of a management system is both to meet air quality objectives and to minimise harmful emissions by setting appropriate source emission limits. We should expect that these objectives would become more stringent as research demonstrates adverse health effects at levels currently considered to be ‘safe’, and technological developments enable lower or even zero pollutant emissions through the development of alternative processes.

In the absence of air quality standards, the WHO Guidelines may be used in the interim to set air quality objectives.

The following schematic (Figure 12.1) attempts to show the interrelationship between the various elements of an air quality management system.

Figure 12.1: Elements of an Air Quality Management System

Public access to air quality information is integral to a comprehensive air quality management system. Most industrialised countries, and a few developing countries, maintain extensive web-based information systems.