A great thing about this year’s EcoFest was that it gave Gladstone residents a chance to talk to industry managers about industry issues.

One such topic was the Air Quality Index printed on the second page of the Observer. Without exception the people I spoke to thought that it was a great idea and most found knowing more about the quality of Gladstone’s air very reassuring.

While it’s great to know if the air quality in your area is “Good” or “Very Good”, several people asked me how this is judged. The Air Quality Index is based upon readings published online by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM). To make this information easier to find, the Gladstone Industry Leadership Group site www.gilg.com.au has a link to this page on the DERM site.

While it is explained on the DERM site, the index is based upon the percentage that five key contaminants are of their individual air quality standards. These standards use measurement units of either “parts per million” or “micrograms per cubic metre”, so to make this explanation simpler, I’ll just call them “units”.

Based on this simplification, if a contaminant’s air quality standard is 9 units and the reading was less than one third of this standard, that is between 0 and 3, then the air quality would be “Very Good”. Similarly, if the reading was in the middle third of the standard, from 3 to 6 units, it would be “Good” or in the top third between 6 and 9 units it would be “Fair”. If the reading was more than 9 units it would be either “Poor” or “Very Poor”.

The Observer index takes the worst hourly reading recorded for the worst of the five contaminants and this then becomes the location’s air quality for the whole day.

As the Gladstone Air Quality Index has been published for more than two months, I am very interested to know if you think the index can be improved. For instance, do you like the current tabular format or do you think a map should be included. Do you think that there should be a weekly summary of air quality in Gladstone or do you have any other suggestions?

If you would like to give me any feedback on the index, please go to our forum topic at www.gilg.com.au.

If you would like to have your say online and don't know how, please click on this link which shows you how to register and make a comment, anonymously if you wish

I look forward to hearing from you soon, cheers, Kurt.

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