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cleanairtas.com

Site last updated: 09/02/2010

A citizens' court puts Environment Minister Michelle O'Byrne on trial.

Tasmania puts forestry before Health
with its deliberate pernicious planned burn smoke.
We are fighting for our lives because of environmental smoke pollution.
This site has gone global, please visit BurningIssues.org

per·ni·cious [par níshass] adj.
          1. causing serious harm: causing great harm, destruction, or death.
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

In 2008 the total particle emissions to the Tasmanian airshed from heavy-fuel forestry industry planned burns alone, is estimated to be in the range of 86,000 to 120, 000 tonnes of particles after consuming 7.2 million tonnes of wood - EPA Division Tasmania 2009.
Pollution figures were officially 'underestimated'.

Deliberately lit forestry fires (planned burns/logging burns/regeneration burns/ plantation burns) what ever they like to call them produce these large quantities of smoke across Tasmania, Australia which people are forced to breathe.
Planned clearing does not mean planned burning.
This smoke is causing misery to many people in the short term,
and the long term effects on the whole Tasmanian population are huge.

Tobacco smoke is burning vegetation. Forestry smoke is burning vegetation!

Asthma Foundation still refuses to lobby against planned burning for asthmatics !!...... see the Asthma Pages
Millions of dollars are spent annually educating people about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke and yet Tasmanians are being made to 'smoke' this forestry residue.
The major toxic component of tobacco smoke is particulate matter. So, it is ok to be smothered in forestry smoke but deadly to inhale cigarette smoke?
A study for the US EPA, using tumour initiation tests on mice and Ames tests on bacteria,
concluded that woodsmoke was in fact 12 times as mutagenic (likely to cause cancer)
as the same quantity of tobacco smoke.

Burning solid fuel yields particulate pollution - solid particles smaller than a red blood cell which have been implicated in  2.1 million deaths world wide per year. .  "Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air. ...we know that when particle levels go up, people die¹. "
 Indeed, wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco².
1. Joel Schwartz, Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health, E Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2002
2. Wm. A Pryor, Persistent Free Radicals in Woodsmoke: An ESR Spin Trapping Study, Free Radical Biology and Medicine 1989, 7(1): 17-21

Particulate Matter Mortality
"Based on reviews of the latest scientific literature, the Air Resources Board staff has concluded that particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) is much more toxic than previously estimated. New research suggests that even small increases in exposure increase the potential for earlier deaths." (CEPA - California Environmental Protection Agency) 

BEWARE:  This smoke is damaging you and your family's health and our environment.
Our Health Department and Environment Division should be especially concerned about small-particle pollution.
The tiniest particles can penetrate past the body's immune defences, travelling deep into the lungs and the bloodstream causing all sorts of other health problems you would never connect had come from this smoke.

Clean air is one of our most precious resources, essential for our survival and quality of life.
Note: When visiting a link, always use your back arrow to return to this site.

  If you are a non-smoker, then why are you being made to inhale forestry's harmful smoke?
If a cigarette smoker, backyard burner, or domestic wood heater owner blew smoke into people’s faces they would be fined. Why then are forestry treated any differently? Michelle O’Byrne MP Minister for Environment, and our Environment Protection Authority (EPA) need to start going after the big fish instead of, I believe, protecting them.

Forestry are not even interested in the tons of wood they burn or the tons of smoke they release.
From information released under Freedom of Information:-
Between the 28/3/2008 and  4/7/2008 Forestry Tasmania conducted 536 planned burns.
Between the 28/3/2008 and 4/7/2008 the private forests conducted 450 planned burns.
Some of these burns lasted for days and smouldered much longer.
There are other smokeless methods available to forestry to get rid of their rubbish.
Our health does not fit in with forestry's polluting timetable.

The lifetime of PM 2.5 particle pollution is from days to weeks and their travel distance ranges from 100 to greater than 1000 kilometres (NRDC, 2000)

Below: The dust storms from central Australia in 2009 show how far PM10 particles can travel (over 2000Km in this instance) and yet our forest industries deliberately burn large numbers of PM2.5 smoky fires a short distance upwind of populated areas in our small state (see satelite image below). Tasmania is under the black arrow.

All monitoring stations around the state recorded high readings.
This is the Launceston graph

12/5/2009 - Launceston, a city of over 100,000 people, inhaled this particular deliberate act of planned burn smoke and yet it barely recorded on the fixed air monitoring stations.

Any smoke causes distress, and can eventually cause death.
For this reason there can be no more deals or compromises being done to allow forestry planned burns to continue.
When it comes to Tasmanian's health this should be non negotiable.

Seeing an average adult breathes 11,000 litres of air a day (7-8 litres a minute) fine particle pollution from the smoke of burnt logging rubbish, poses a significant health threat for some of our most valuable and vulnerable people in our community. Children, adolescents, seniors, people with asthma and chronic lung diseases, people with chronic heart disease and diabetics are most at risk, but this effects you too.
Foetuses and young children are more vulnerable for several reasons: Their biological defence mechanisms are still forming, and they can not detoxify harmful substances and repair damage the way adults can. Children breathe 20-50% more air when playing outside, ie, more air than adults on a pound-for-pound basis. They spend more time in general outside and are unable to recognize warning signs during polluted days like headaches and shortness of breath - signs that would drive adults to try and avoid the pollution.
This mainstream smoke leaves toxic particulate residue which clings to hair, clothing and bedding and has been found to be dangerous to children. The residue includes toxins and carcinogens that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor, or near any soft furnishings. It can set off a serious asthma attack for what appears to be no apparent reason.
Asthma is the most common reason for trips to the emergency department and for hospital stays. It’s also one of the most common reasons for a visit to the doctor, and the number one cause of school absenteeism.

Our children in particular should not be subjected to this pollution.
If you can see smoke or can smell smoke then you are breathing it.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Native American Proverb.

"Children exposed to smoke in early childhood, have a higher risk of developing childhood asthma. Asthma cannot be cured."(Asthma Foundations Australia).
Tasmania has the highest rate of asthma in  Australia. Out of a population of 500,000 there are 65,000 with asthma (this does not include other lung conditions like COPD) and there are 15,000 children with the disease.
Asthma in particular has become a major epidemic and has been linked to poor air quality. Air containing large amounts of particulate matter as well as high ozone levels can trigger asthma attacks

   'Smoke management' means stopping the smoke at the source.
Not putting people on drugs while the smoke continues.

This smoke is so bad the forest industries have agreed to hide it when tourists come to the state.
"Burning will be managed to minimise the risk of adverse impact on significant tourism events or in major holiday periods such as Easter." - Good Neighbour Charter for Commercial Forestry in Tasmania 2008

Our government has had years to fix this harmful pollution.
They know Tasmania has the highest incidence of asthma in Australia (Asthma Foundation), and they know 3 out of 4 people have a chronic health condition like cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma and diabetes, that prevents them form working. (Health Minister statement to Damien Brown-Mercury 2/12/2009). All these diseases have been linked in world wide studies to particulate matter.

World Environment Day 2008 (3.83Mb .wmv file).   WATCH the VIDEO
             Note: Mac users need Windows Media® Components for QuickTime  to allow Quicktime to utilise .wmv files. Read and download.

Why should we be forced into our 'shelters' while forestry fire bomb us from outside.
I believe it is a basic human right to be able to breathe clean air and to go outside as we wish.

Many credible scientific studies link air pollution to sickness, diseases and death in humans and in animals.
No studies say forestry smoke is good for your health.
  Please read this article before you turn the page...
Particle Pollution Linked to Deep Vein Thrombosis and Blood Clots

"The Environment Protection Policy (Air Quality) 2004 provides a framework for the management and regulation of both point and diffuse sources of emissions to air for pollutants with the potential to cause environmental harm. The Policy was made on 13 December 2004 and came into effect on 1 June 2005.
The environmental values to be protected under the Air Quality Policy are:

• the life, health and well-being of humans
• the life, health and well-being of other forms of life
• visual amenity."

This is not what is happening.