News Healthier Air Means Healthier Cities: HCA Attends the Safer Shared Air Conference in Canberra On Wednesday 28 October Healthy Cities Australia joined Safer Shared Air: Indoor Air, Health and Productivity conference at Parliament House in Canberra organised by The Safer Air Project. The conference brought together scientific and policy experts and lived-experience advocates from around Australia to discuss current research on air quality and how to translate scientific knowledge about the importance of good quality air for our health into good policy. Proof is in the Air Scientific experts who addressed the conference explained the research that shows the air we breathe has a major impact on our health. For example, many infectious diseases, such as influenza and COVID-19 are spread through the air via particles exhaled by an infectious person. Better ventilation and air cleaning can reduce the risk of infection spreading through places like schools, hospitals and public buildings. This helps to protect vulnerable people, including those with a chronic disease, from the risk of potentially life-threatening infections. For people with asthma, poor indoor air quality can lead to dangerous flare ups and send people to hospital. Asthma Australia’s Director of Public Affairs and Policy Adjunct Professor Rebecca Haddock, told the conference how indoor exposures to smoke from bushfires and wood heaters, as well as indoor gas appliances, can be potent triggers for people with asthma. Engineers and built environment experts told us about the modern air purification and building technologies that can provide very high quality indoor air in all public spaces. Associate Professor Suman Majumdar from the Burnet Institute, for example, explained his research on implementing this new technology in schools and local government facilities in Victoria. Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC) engineer Brett Fairweather explained the need for political leadership to enable technical experts like him to design new mandatory standards for building design that can guarantee clean indoor air. He shared the story of his own young daughter, who contracted COVID-19 in a poorly ventilated school classroom. She experiences severe long COVID symptoms that have had a significant impact on her cognitive function and ability to lead a normal life. It’s Time to Act Australia One of the good news stories from the conference came from the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Clean Indoor Air, whose chair Dr Amanda Cohn MLC, a former general practitioner, shared some of its key findings and recommendations. Dr Cohn explained her committee’s findings, which support the need for a national response to address indoor air quality. The Inquiry also recommended the NSW Government take specific action to address indoor air quality in facilities it controls, such as state-owned buildings and social housing properties. As Dr Bronwyn King from Air Club explained, countries all over the world from South Korea to Mongolia have already acted to ensure better air quality through comprehensive, enforceable legislation. It is high time Australia followed their lead and put the same thought into protecting us from air pollution as we already do for water and food. Alexander Brown from Healthy Cities Australia with colleagues from the Centre for Safe Air and Asthma Australia. We Need Your Voice That’s where you come in. Healthy Cities Australia has signed on to to the Consensus Statement supporting a National Healthy Air Strategy. But we need your help. Every individual and organisation that signs onto the statement helps strengthen the case for action at the Federal level. Visit the Centre for Safe Air website to add your voice.