Worried you’re breathing unclean air? Here’s how to measure it

by bpckle | Nov 2, 2026 | In the Media

A breath of fresh air does wonders for the body and mind.

In some areas, however, the air may not be as clean as it seems. This may be due to pollution or natural hazards such as bushfires and dust storms.

If you’re worried about air quality in your local area, there’s no shortage of apps and websites promising to help.

But which should you choose? And can you trust the information they offer?

Where to start

In Australia, the most reliable place to start is your state or territory Environmental Protection Authority website.

These sites publish air quality information in many formats, from technical data and colour coded advisory maps to emergency incident updates.

The data comes from government monitoring networks, which operate under the Australian National Environment Protection (Ambient Air Quality) Measure. This framework sets assessment standards to ensure air quality data is collected and interpreted in a consistent, accurate and transparent way.

At first glance, this data may look intimidating. The simplest way to interpret it is to check the air quality category for your location. These categories are colour coded based on a traffic light system, with green indicating “good” air quality and dark red identifying areas with “extremely poor” air quality.

To determine these categories, the government collects data on the pollutant concentration in an area, which is the amount of a harmful substance found in a volume of air. This data is quality checked and published as hourly updates.

What about phone apps?

Mobile phone apps provide air quality information on the go. These apps often re-purpose data from government websites, sometimes in combination with low-cost monitoring networks like IQAir and PurpleAir.

These networks typically use indicative data, which points to general trends without offering exact values. So while these apps are convenient, it pays to check where their data comes from and if it has been modified in any way.

Many mobile apps use a traffic light reporting system that looks similar to the government’s air quality categories. However, a handful use the Air Quality Index. This index ranks common pollutants – such as carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide – on a scale from 0 to 500. The higher the number, the most “risky” the pollutant from an air pollution and human health perspective.

This numbers-based approach is useful for classifying air quality, but can hide important details. For instance, an app may not indicate which pollutant the air quality index is based on or whether measurements are taken hourly, daily or weekly. Just as weather apps can give varied forecasts, air quality apps can report different values for the same place and time because they use different models and data sources.

Grassroots solutions

To gather accurate air quality data, government monitoring systems rely on equipment known as reference instruments. These are highly precise devices that require regular maintenance, along with frequent checks and adjustments to ensure accurate readings. Given their complex design, reference instruments can be difficult to move and expensive to operate.

In contrast, indicative monitors are small, compact and affordable devices powered by batteries or solar. They estimate levels of dust, temperature and humidity. Some also measure gases and volatile organic compounds, which have been shown to harm human health.

Indicative monitors help fill gaps in official monitoring data and are widely used in community projects, such as OPENAIR and Air Watch. On a broader level, indicative networks can help identify and track pollution sources such as vehicle emissions and woodsmoke.

However, their data must be interpreted with caution. Without regular care and maintenance, the sensors in indicative monitors can become less accurate over time. What’s more, monitors can be placed in unsuitable locations – for instance, next to barbecues or outdoor smoking areas – where poor airflow can distort the readings.

So while indicative monitors can alert us to poor air quality, the data they provide is approximate, not exact.

What you can do

Air quality data from apps and websites can vary in quality and reliability.

Before trusting an air quality data app or website, it’s best to ask four simple questions:

• Who runs it? This may be a government agency, university, research body, company or community network.

• What data is it showing? Certain sources may present primary data collected by the organisation that operates the app or website, while others rely on secondary data repurposed from somewhere else.

• What instruments do they use? This determines whether an app or website provides estimates, indicative data or reference grade data, which is the gold standard.

• What quality control is in place? This includes measures such as regular maintenance and calibration, being placed in an appropriate location and transparent information about a system’s limitations.

If a platform cannot provide clear answers to these questions, it may still be useful. But it should not be treated as the final word on air quality.

So the challenge is not finding data, but knowing how to assess its quality and interpret it responsibly.

Margaret Davidson is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygieniests, the Australasian College of Toxicology and Risk Assessment, the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand and ASTM International.

NZ’s resource management rules have been rewritten. What happens after the election?

by bpckle | Nov 2, 2026 | In the Media

As each new environmental assessment shows, the impacts on New Zealand’s natural and urban areas are only compounding.

The government’s most recent national snapshot describes polluted rivers and coastal waters, declining biodiversity, poor air quality in some communities and greenhouse gas emissions that remain high by international standards.

Increasingly extreme weather is exposing the consequences of how we manage our land. Flooding and landslides have devastated communities, while damage caused by forestry slash during storms have brought heavy costs for people and property.

Meanwhile, New Zealand faces ever-growing demands for housing, infrastructure and economic development. Yet the regulatory system meant to manage it remains unsettled.

The previous Labour government passed legislation to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA), only for the National-led coalition to repeal it and introduce its own Planning Act and Natural Environment Act.

The new system promises to make development easier, reduce costs and delays, and improve environmental management. But environment groups warn it could weaken protections for nature and leave communities facing even greater risks.

Although the new legislation has passed, most of the changes will come into effect over the next four years. The outcome of this election, of course, may see the rulebook rewritten yet again.

A transformed policy landscape

Few areas of New Zealand’s environmental policy landscape have been untouched by the past three years of reform. But we point to key changes that have prioritised development over addressing issues outlined in successive environmental reports.

Consider safeguards for our degraded freshwater ecosystems. Following earlier court decisions requiring tighter controls on diffuse pollution from farms, the government amended the RMA to allow activities with significant adverse effects on water quality to continue, provided gradual improvements are made.

Rather than impose immediate changes that could prove costly or difficult to implement, this change aimed to give farmers and councils more time to tackle pollution. Still, it hinges on voluntary action and accurate nutrient modelling that has its own significant limitations.

In introducing its Fast-track Approvals Act to speed up consenting, the government talked of ending “a culture of no”. But while there’d been criticisms over unnecessary delays and costs for large projects, between 92% and 96% of resource consents had been granted annually over the preceding decade.

The scheme has also proved controversial for its inclusion of subdivisions and earlier declined “zombie projects”.

Environmental decision-making has become more centralised in other important areas.

The new resource management laws give ministers greater powers to override environmental limits when setting national direction. While this might help provide more consistent rules across the country, limits can change with successive governments, creating uncertainty for businesses and communities, and increasing risks to the environment.

The government has also removed some regulatory powers from regional councils to protect marine biodiversity and concentrated responsibility within the Ministry for Primary Industries, despite concerns over a long-time failure to prevent damage to ocean habitats. This could well become a focal point for post-election coalition negotiations.

Other reforms affect how costs of improving the environment are shared between landowners, councils and communities.

In Tair?whiti, for example, highly erodible land and plantation forestry have contributed to serious damage during storms. The government has declined to fund proposed changes to land use aimed at reducing future landslides, while ministers have urged councils to consider the costs of enforcing environmental rules on forestry companies and their directors.

Read more: Election Policy Tracker: your guide to what the parties are promising during the 2026 election campaign

The damage caused by forestry and erosion in Tair?whiti reflects land-use decisions made by successive governments. But without significant investment in changing how vulnerable land is used, communities may continue to bear the costs through flooding, landslides and environmental damage.

The Planning Act also expands provisions for regulatory relief, which could require councils to compensate landowners when planning restrictions significantly affect “reasonable land use”.

Contrary to the RMA’s “polluter pays” model, its principle is that individual landowners should not necessarily bear the full cost of restrictions introduced to restore our waterways for example. Such compensation requirements could also make environmental protection more expensive for councils.

The government’s proposed cap on council rate increases would place further limits on how councils could fund these costs, while the prospect of council amalgamations adds more uncertainty.

Meanwhile, the new Natural Environment Act favours voluntary action plans in some circumstances where environmental limits are breached or need to be restored. Some primary sector groups have welcomed the new framework, arguing it will cut unnecessary regulation and consenting costs.

While government analysis also suggests there will be less need for resource consents, we question whether environmental management will necessarily become simpler for landowners. National forestry regulations, for instance, require extensive documentation to justify why resource consent is not needed.

It’s notable to us that even the legal definition of the natural environment has changed. The RMA recognised the relationship between people and the natural world, including responsibilities to future generations. The Natural Environment Act, by contrast, explicitly excludes “humans” from its definition of ecosystems.

The new law still includes biodiversity protection among its objectives. Whether it delivers that protection will depend on the environmental limits set by ministers, how they are enforced and the resources councils have to carry out their responsibilities.

What parties are pitching

Perhaps the most significant change concerns the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in environmental management. The coalition has sought to reduce its role in government decision-making, including in the management of natural resources.

Yet our experience as researchers working on coastal areas, native and plantation forests, and rural and urban environments shows the value of relational te ao M?ori approaches that recognise the relationships between people, land and water. We see these as essential to restoring damaged environments and helping communities withstand the effects of climate change.

So, what are parties bringing to the table in the environment space this election?

National has promised loans of up to $300 million to help farmers store water and would ban ring-net fishing in high-protection areas of the Hauraki Gulf. ACT wants to remove Te Mana o te Wai from resource consenting, reducing the priority given to freshwater health in those decisions.

The Greens, meanwhile, are proposing tighter environmental limits, stronger protection for the Hauraki Gulf and a phase-out of bottom trawling. Opportunity also wants to phase out bottom trawling, expand marine protected areas and move towards fisheries management based on the health of whole ecosystems.

Labour, meanwhile, has said it would amend rather than repeal the coalition’s new resource management laws, including restoring agreements that provide for iwi participation in environmental decision-making.

As New Zealanders weigh these competing approaches, there’s value in considering the M?ori kaupapa of t?puna pono – or being “good ancestors” to future generations. A healthy relationship with the natural world remains at the core of this.

From the cost of living to how best to tackle climate change, the coming election involves some big choices.

This article is part of The Conversation’s Election 2026 series: expert analysis of the major policy debates and the big challenges New Zealand’s next government will face.

Steve Urlich has received funding from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. He is a member of the Resource Management Law Association, the New Zealand Coastal Society and the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society.

Hamish Rennie has received research funding from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. He is a member of the New Zealand Planning Institute, the Resource Management Law Association and the New Zealand Coastal Society, and a Fellow of the NZ Geographical Society.