Air quality refers to the condition of the air that surrounds us and good quality clean air is essential to the health and well being of humans as well as animal and plant life on this planet. Air pollution, caused either by humans or the natural environment, lowers air quality and in have severe health problems and in high enough concentration can cause death. For example, the World Health Organisation estimated in 2012, 7 million people world wide died prematurely due to the effects of air pollution ("7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution", 2016). With such serious consequences many cities around the world 's are taking significant steps to keep the air we breathe and share with the environment as clean …show more content…
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Brisbane City Council takes air quality very seriously and in 1996 introduced the Clean Air Strategy with the goal of having the cleanest air of any Australian city by 2026. Working towards this goal the city council, over the past 20 years, have made many necessary changes such as creating interconnecting bike ways across the city, replacing old buses with Enhanced Environmentally-friendly Vehicle buses as well as trialling alternative fuels such as biodiesel in council vehicles (Brisbane City Council, 2016; "Clean Air Update", 2016).
Having a clean air strategy seems to be paying off as Brisbane’s overall air pollution levels are trending dow and did not exceed the national standards for air pollution in 2010. In comparison, Hobart exceeded them once, Melbourne and Perth both exceed the guidelines four times and Sydney exceeded them a staggering 10 times. Brisbane 's air is generally cleaner than that of Sydney or Melbourne ("Clean Air Update", 2016). In comparison to cities around the world, a report published in The Economist considered Brisbane’s air quality is considered quite clean in comparison to other cities around the world with some of the lowest levels of particulate matter seen in industrialised nations ("Choked",