1. Introduction Every people in the world expect and deserve a clean, healthy environment, not just for ourselves, but to pass on to future generations. In achieving this, many have been done by every country leader. The New Zealand government for example, has set standards so that everyone in New Zealand country has clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and clean land to live on. The standard known as “national environmental standards” , it covers air quality standard; sources of human drinking water standard; telecommunications facilities; and electricity transmission.
These standards not only protect people, they also secure a consistent approach and decision making process throughout the whole country. They are regulations issued under sections 43 and 44 of the Resource Management Act and apply nationally (Ministry for The environment 2010). The discussion that follow will focus on air pollution particularly in urban areas in New Zealand by using Airshed modelling; also will look on what effects of air pollution do have on the environment; what are the methods employed by environmental agencies to address this problem; and what are the strength and weakness of the method used.2. Air Pollution in New Zealand Although New Zealand’s air quality is mostly good, there are times when the air in many urban areas is affected by pollution.
The pollutant most commonly affecting the urban air is smoke and soot. Air pollution not only has a direct effect to the human health, but also it could contribute to the adverse effects on the environment. In New Zealand, a number of urban areas have air pollution problems, particularly during the winter (NIWA 2010).The air pollution issue has encouraged the New Zealand Government to introduce mandatory air quality standards: the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality (NES). There are five standards for ambient (outdoor) air quality to keep the air outdoors clean and safe for people to breathe. These standards deal with pollutants like sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and smoke and dusts.
These last two are collectively referred to as fine particles, and denoted as PM10, which indicates particles less than 10 micrometres (or microns) in diameter (NIWA 2010).
