air quality

Federal, state and territory environment ministers yesterday promised to take a "fresh look at Australia's air quality", vowing to use the plan to prioritise and respond to the review's 23 recommendations.

The review into Australia's air quality standards, last updated in 2003, found that for the pollutants monitored, there was no safe level of exposure. "The results . . . show that there are significant health effects at current levels of air pollution in Australian cities," it said.

Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta says the quality of water and air in Java is the worst among islands nationwide. As a province, Jakarta has the worst water and air quality.

Citing the 2011 report on the country's environment, Gusti said Jakarta and several other cities in Java designated only 10 percent of their areas as "green areas", in contrast to the required 30 percent.

Read full story: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/08/07/java-has-worst-water-air-q...

A new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change looks at the cost to the Chinese economy of lax air quality regulations between 1975 and 2005. The MIT researchers found that air pollutants produced a substantial socio-economic cost to China over the past three decades.