A guest lecture at University of Technology Sydney for A/Prof Nimish Biloria, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building.

1. Air Quality, Health
and Illness:
A Spatial Science
Perspective
Presenter
Hamish Robertson, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Health
Queensland University of Technology

2. Overview
• Air quality research growing and gaining traction (finally) but
resistance exists
• Context and knowledge base
• Global trend and regional effects
• Specific health scenarios e.g. neurological impacts and lifetime health
and illness trajectories
• Environmental impacts and sequalae e.g. particulates and long-term
illness
• Social inequalities – health and illness are not ‘simple’ or ‘natural’
phenomena
• Interventions – consider the tech you are working with in this
context…

3. Air Quality Research
• The research base on air quality and human (and animal, and
environmental) health is growing rapidly
• Industrialisation has led to major impacts globally including LMCs and
richer countries but unequal effects (surprise)
• Association with many acute and chronic health problems is now very
evident
• Oil and gas industries as well as industrial chemicals and others
clearly implicated
• Social inequalities also closely linked but not always uneven e.g. bush
fires can impact even the rich (if they don’t or can’t leave)

4. A Century of Opportunity to Act and Yet…

5. Consider
• Temperature
• Humidity
• Particulates
• VOCs (and forever chemicals)
• Latitude, longitude and elevation
• Time/temporality/seasonality

6. Wet Bulb Temperature
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/24/wet-bulb-temperature-extreme-heat/
• A measurement long known to climate scientists has begun creeping
into the public consciousness as extreme weather conditions force us
to reflect on what conditions humans can withstand.
• In a summer of record-breaking heat in many places, severe humidity
has made the outdoors feel particularly unbearable. While there are
numerous ways to measure climate conditions, some experts say it’s
time to start talking about wet-bulb temperature.
• Writer and educator Hank Green explained why it matters on TikTok
during late June’s Pacific Northwest heat wave: “Temperature tells us
a physical attribute of the atmosphere. Heat index is about comfort.
Wet bulb is about survival.”

7. Burden of
Disease and Air
Pollution in Our
Region

8. WHO and
the Human
Cost of Poor
Air Quality

9. Air Pollution as a Risk Factor
• Differential disease effects by age and sex
• In utero effects (see upcoming slide)
• Lifetime trajectory impact not just incidental effects
• Correlates -> co-morbidity -> multimorbidity, impacts as you
age
• Growth of knowledge – medical science is developmental
• Possible connections as yet unconfirmed/unproven (casual
chain)
• New air quality factors – e.g. new VOCs or new scientific
correlations

10. The Bigger Picture

11. Source:
https://waqi.info/

13. Global Burden of Disease Study Data for Air Pollution
Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/

14. Air Pollution and Neurodegeneration: The Dementias

15. Neurodevelopment and Neuroinflammation

16. Indirect Effects – Covid and the ‘Co-morbidity’
Rationalisation

17. Disaster Events and Their Long Tails

18. Kelowna, British
Columbia 2023
now!

19. Melbourne 2016

20. • In the 30 hours from 6 pm on 21 November, there was a 672 per cent increase
in respiratory-related presentations to Melbourne and Geelong public hospitals
(3,365 more presentations than expected based on the three-year average).
•
• Tragically, the event also led to 10 deaths, which have been investigated by the
State Coroner.
• The response to the November 2016 epidemic thunderstorm asthma event
was reviewed by the Inspector-General for Emergency Management (IGEM)
• IGEM has also monitored the progress of the implementation of the
recommendations from the review

21. Systemic
Responses and
Systemic
Integration?

22. Political Economy of Health and Illness
• So, where’s the equity in all of this???
• Health and illness are political and, often, policy choices – see Covid
comment above
• We mostly have illness systems that treat the problems we often
either create or contribute to
• Epidemiological patterns are often the social patterning of toxin and
pathogen exposures
• Industries lobby to be polluters – gas, oil, motor vehicles, ‘forever
chemicals’ etc. etc.
• Who you are can determine where you are, and where you are can
directly affect your exposure profile

23. Bush Fires and
Human Health –
Short and Longer
Term

24. Pollution and health: a progress update
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2822%2900090-0/fulltext
The Commission noted pollution's deep inequity: 92% of pollution-related deaths, and the greatest
burden of pollution's economic losses, occur in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).

25. Health Status and Social
Inequality:
China Example
International Journal of Environmental Research
and Public Health
Source: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14225

26. Role of Spatial Science and Technology
• Ubiquitous spatial data and technology – phones, tablets, wearables,
laptops, specialist instruments etc.
• Methods of collection and analysis e.g. data visualisation software,
geographic information systems and software, proprietary software
products
• Scale and time factors – dynamic variables
• Locational exactitude – e.g. main road exposure versus secondary
roads, transport routes for toxic transports (e.g. train disasters)
• Accessibility and affordability – democratisation of spatial data?

27. Localisation and Granularity – Practice and Politics

28. Spatial Exposures and Inequalities
Disparities in ambient nitrogen dioxide pollution in the United States
Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208450120

29. Urban Heat Island Index

30. The Miyawaki Method

31. Interventions?
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-21/jakarta-sends-civil-servants-to-work-
from-home-to-clear-smog

32. Conclusion
• Health and illness are politically informed social phenomena not
simply ‘natural’ events
• Air pollution is a choice (and an active choice e.g. subsidies,
neoliberalism) and therefore so are its consequences
• The warnings have been there for a century or more
• The Western Pacific is hardest hit but this is a global problem
• Mitigation is possible but climate change may be at tipping point
• Human health and illness are a reflection of environmental health,
interconnections matter
• Spatial concepts, science and technology are key to responses –
support both objective knowledge and subjective capability
• Good luck!