reduce emissions – Public Health Expert, University of Otago, New Zealand

Air pollution in Aotearoa NZ: Five key ways to reduce the massive health and social costs

Thursday, July 21st, 2022 | cooju60p | 1 Comment

Dr John Kerr, Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Simon Hales*

Kerr J, Wilson N, Hales S. Air pollution in Aotearoa NZ: Five key ways to reduce the massive health and social costs. Public Health Expert Blog. 21 July 2022. https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/air-pollution-in-aotearoa-nz-five-key-ways-to-reduce-the-massive-health-and-social-costs/

A new study has estimated the surprisingly high level of harm from air pollution. This annual harm includes the premature deaths of more than 3300 adult New Zealanders and more than 13,100 hospital admissions for respiratory illness and heart disease. The annual social costs resulting from this pollution was estimated at $15.6 billion. Fortunately there are many ways to reduce air pollution and we discuss five key ones in this blog. These range from free public transport to reform of the electricity market to lower costs to citizens. Continue reading →

Lessons from Canada for NZ: Carbon, Cycling, Tobacco, Nutrition and Cannabis

Monday, April 8th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Jones, A/Prof George Thomson

Canada has a number of progressive public policies which can influence health. In this blog we briefly look at 6 potential lessons for NZ in the domains of: (i) responding to climate change; (ii) supporting cycling; (iii) tobacco control; (iv) controls on food marketing directed at children; (v) healthy food guidelines; and (vi) cannabis law reform.

Continue reading →

Lime E-Scooters – Avoiding a collision course with public health?

Monday, February 11th, 2019 | tedla55p | 2 Comments

Prof Janet Hoek, Assoc Prof George Thomson, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Caroline Shaw

Currently introduced in four New Zealand cities, Lime electric scooters (e-scooters) have elicited varied responses. Proponents argue they will help reduce traffic density, thus bringing health and environmental benefits, while critics suggest they risk unacceptable overall harm to pedestrians, users themselves, and to taxpayers, who fund treatments for injuries. In this blog, we consider the public health implications of Lime e-scooters, review how policy makers could maximise the potentially desirable outcomes offered by e-scooters while minimising the harms they pose, and consider wider questions regarding allocation of urban space.

Continue reading →

Having trouble posting comments?

If you are having trouble seeing a green 'Post comment' button when you are trying to submit a comment, please check to see if you are using Internet Explorer. If so, follow these instructions:

1. Open the browser
2. Press the Alt key on your keyboard and this will make a menu bar at the top appear
3. Click on tools and then select compatibility view settings
4. Remove all ticks from the 3 boxes

This removes the compatibility setting on your browser and should allow you to see the button.

Notes about PHE blog:

· Peer review process: Where a blog post has a single author, then the content is always peer-reviewed by at least one senior academic in public health. This is to help ensure that statements have a reasonable basis in terms of scientific plausibility and to ensure that uncertainty is appropriately acknowledged where statements have speculative aspects. For multi-authored blogs there can also be additional peer-review. Of note is that the PHE blog posts are often well-referenced so that readers can readily check the background science and arguments.

· Competing interests: Where a blog post author has a commercial competing interest then this will be acknowledged in a statement at the end of the blog post.

· Relationship with the parent institution: Any views expressed in these blog posts are those of the author(s) alone and not their parent institution. This is consistent with the meaning of academic freedom under the NZ Education Act 1989 (section 161). Furthermore, in a free society, it is undesirable for universities to vet or otherwise control statements by academic staff.

· Comments posted to this blog: These will usually only be included if they add intellectual content to the discussions and are not abusive etc.

Public Health Expert

Recent Posts

Archives

Tag Archives: reduce emissions

Air pollution in Aotearoa NZ: Five key ways to reduce the massive health and social costs

Lessons from Canada for NZ: Carbon, Cycling, Tobacco, Nutrition and Cannabis

Lime E-Scooters – Avoiding a collision course with public health?

Having trouble posting comments?

Notes about PHE blog: