To understand the potential health impacts, costs and effects air pollution has across the country, the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transport and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency commissioned the study "Health and air pollution in New Zealand 2016 (HAPINZ 3.0)".
It was carried out by the consultancy Emission Impossible, which used population, health and air quality data from 2016 to analyse the situation.
Project lead Dr Gerda Kuschel said the study showed that even low levels of air pollution were of concern across almost all of New Zealand.
The study found more than 3300 adult New Zealanders died yearly due to exposure to air pollution, and vehicle emissions were responsible for two-thirds of those cases.
Low air quality was also responsible for more than 13,100 hospital admissions for respiratory and cardiac illnesses, including 845 asthma hospitalisations for children and more than 13,200 cases of childhood asthma.
Dr Kuschel said it was not really possible to say which city or region raised more concerns, but highlighted that Invercargill had the highest rate of premature mortality due to air pollution.
"In terms of the rate, Invercargill city is the highest at 219 per 100,000 people aged 30+ years in 2016.
"Invercargill city does come out to be the worst on the basis of the rate per 100,000 people but more people are dying prematurely in other places.
"However, the estimated total deaths in Invercargill is 74 which is much lower than in other places and especially in Auckland — at 939."
The same trend was found when the number of hospital admissions was examined.
Auckland had the highest number of admissions at 3921 and restricted activity days (days on which people could not do the things they might otherwise have done if air pollution was not present) at 537,319 in 2016.
Invercargill had the highest rate of hospital admissions at 470 per 100,000 people (all ages) and the Queenstown Lakes district had the highest rate of restricted activity days at 86.7 per 100 people (all ages) in 2016.
Invercargill also ranked high in terms of the cost per person from poor air quality.
While Auckland had the highest overall social cost at $4.45billion in 2016, Invercargill had the highest cost per person at $6294.
Asked if she believed the data would be different in 2022 as there had been many air quality initiatives since 2016, Dr Kuschel said even a 5% reduction in pollution could deliver appreciable health improvements.
"Every initiative helps. The cool thing about this study is it will provide robust data to help with assessing the effectiveness of any options for improving New Zealand’s air quality going forward."
Environment Southland chairman Nicol Horrell was surprised with the findings but he hoped initiatives such as the air quality regional plan, which was signed off in 2016, would help.
"Most people would be shocked with this report showing that vehicle emission is actually a more serious problem than previously thought.
"I think that at this stage the report generates more questions than answers ... but it is fair to say that air quality is among our priorities and we will look into this new science to ensure we improve the air quality."
