Clean Air Journal = Tydskrif vir Skoon Lug - Volume 20, Issue 2, December 2011

The core objective of the National Association of Clean Air (NACA) is to promote the cause of clean air in South Africa. We strive to bring together people in air quality in all sectors - universities, consulting companies, government and industry - to work towards best practice in air quality management. The NACA Journal is one of our key vehicles to do this.

To determine the impact of implemented air quality interventions beyond ambient air pollution reductions, indicators need to be identified and appropriate health data need to be routinely collected to track air-related health. Presently, the only regulated environmental health performance indicator routinely collected as part of air quality management is the air-related complaint lodged by the public. Here, five years of air-related complaints (n = 875) made by residents in the City of Tshwane (Pretoria, Gauteng) were analysed and considered in relation to ambient SO2 and PM10 concentrations monitored at permanent air quality monitoring stations. When considering exceedances of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, there were 17 complaint days with either an SO2 or PM10 daily average concentration exceedance. However, it was very difficult to make meaningful conclusions about the relation between ambient AQ and air-related complaints given social, economic and data challenges and constraints. There is a real need to have local, air-related health data, for example, upper and lower respiratory tract infections, asthma, etc, generated at clinics and hospitals delivered directly and on an on-going, continuously updated basis to those responsible for implementation of air quality management plans.

This article has been retracted by the Editors and the Authors due to redundant publication (Vakkari et al., 2011). This article was originally submitted to the National Association of Clean Air (NACA) 2011 conference as a conference paper. It was mistakenly included in the Clean Air Journal as a peer-reviewed original article.