Residential and Local Sources of Air Pollution

Since the early 1970s, environmental agencies have focussed most of their attention on large point sources and transport sources of air pollutants. The myriad of small sources scattered throughout suburban Australia, such as people’s heating appliances, lawnmowers and suburban restaurants, have received little attention. Perhaps this is simply because they are so dispersed or they may have been considered negligible, harder to deal with for technical reasons, or harder to deal with for political reasons. The analysis in this report demonstrates that these sources are not negligible, in fact some, such as woodheaters, are significant contributors to decreased air quality. The report discusses the nature and costs of technical options for reducing emissions from these suburban sources, as well as reductions through changes in user behaviour. Examples of existing controls range from stringent approaches such as banning backyard burning in some locations, through to modest requests for users of woodheaters to try to burn their heaters with less smoke. In many cases, controlling these small sources will be a very cost effective means of reducing total inputs of key air pollutants.