Jennifer Pittorino
Glen Yates, who has lived in Yarraville for 13 years, developed adult-onset asthma two years ago after always living a fit and healthy lifestyle.
For years Mr Yates walked his children to school every day along Sommerville Road without checking the air quality.
Now he feels he has paid the price.
Three years ago Mr Yates set up PurpleAir monitors, which monitor real air time quality allowing the user to monitor whichever values they wish.
Mr Yates has been monitoring PM 2.5, the major particulate in diesel exhaust.
“I initially started setting them up out of interest to see what was happening in the area. I put one outside my house and now I am slowly building a network to help the community understand toxins better,” he said.
“In the local area there will be six set up by the end of the month, three from me, three from other parties.”
Mr Yates said the air quality outside varies from day to day, some days it meets health standards, other days it does not.
The current global guidelines for PM2.5 as set down by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is five micrograms per cubic meter averaged over a year.
The Australian guideline for PM2.5 is eight micrograms per cubic meter averaged over a year.
Last weekend the air quality in Yarraville, as recorded by Mr Yates, sat at 34-40 micrograms for the entire weekend.
This is called an inversion layer where air quality was up to six times the Australian standard, posing a risk to asthma sufferers.
“That’s where people with asthma start to play up. Asthma is directly correlated and attributed to the air quality,” Mr Yates explained.
“It can exacerbate asthma symptoms.Asthma sufferers need to have their Ventolin handy.
“I often experience chest tightness, coughing and wheezing, it can feel like extreme hay fever with no relief.”
Mr Yates recommends Yarraville residents, especially asthma sufferers, set up air purifiers in their homes.
Air purifiers can be set to detect PM2.5 changes outside, so the house air can then be filtered and purified.
“When PM2.5 levels are high outside doors and windows should be closed, anything that draws external air should be closed off, if you have air purifiers turn them on.
“Every state school in the inner west has air purifiers, and any schools that have children with high risk asthma should be monitored.”
Locals can access the real time PurpleAir data though the website by selecting real time maps.
“Anyone who wants to set up their own PurpleAir monitoring system can order it online. The more people that add these to the network the more visibility we all have.”
Mr Yates is a member of the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group (MTAG) which is actively striving for low emission zones to be implemented.
“We are not anti-truck, we just want to remove older dirtier trucks off the street with the support of the state government,” he said.
MTAG would like council to follow suit with other councils who have installed PurpleAir networks in their communities.
“There is an issue and it needs to be sorted, council declared a health emergency and we haven’t heard anything since.”
