Burning wood and coal for home heating, road motor vehicle use, industrial activities, and household outdoor burning are the key human-made sources of air pollutants in New Zealand. These pollutants have a range of health effects.
Measuring the relative contribution of each source helps us understand their pressures on our air quality. It also provides context for changes in emissions from individual sources. For example, from 2006 to 2013, PM10 emissions from road motor vehicles decreased 25 percent. However, this source contributed only 9 percent of the total national PM10 emissions from the four key sources. Therefore, this decrease in PM10 emissions from road motor vehicles likely had only a minor effect on total PM10 emissions.
Daily winter emissions and annual average emissions are presented as there is strong seasonality in emissions. Daily winter contributions were also assessed because this is the timeframe used by WHO and in national standards and winter months is when concentrations in excess of the standards most frequently occur.
This dataset relates to the "Relative contribution of key human-made emission sources" measure on the Environmental Indicators, Te taiao Aotearoa website.
Further information can be found in Environet and Golders Associates (2015). Home heating emission inventory and other sources evaluation. Wellington: Ministry for the Environment. Available at https://data.mfe.govt.nz/x/a5FAw6 on the Ministry for the Environment dataservice.
