Abstract
Ambient air pollution has important impacts on a variety of environmental issues, particularly on human health and ecosystem processes. A key tool for understanding the impacts of atmospheric pollution is through the long term measurement of the ambient concentrations of criteria atmospheric pollutants. Monitoring of ambient pollution concentrations has been conducted in the National Air Quality Priority areas since 2009. During this time period, significant changes in the management of air pollution have occurred, including the adoption of the ambient air quality standards, and the implementation of section 21 emission standards. This paper examines the long term evolution of ambient concentrations for PM, SO2 in the Vaal Triangle Airshed Priority Area 2007-2017 and Highveld Priority Area. These trends will be evaluated against the implementation of management interventions and highlight the variation in the measured concentrations and emerging areas of concern.
Highlights
The declaration of greenhouse gases as priority air pollutants (DEA, 2014a). While this legislation has been enacted, certain areas have been identified as being of particular concern and have been declared as air quality priority areas, these include: the Vaal Triangle Airshed Priority Area (VTAPA; DEAT, 2006), the Highveld Priority Area (HPA;DEAT, 2007) and the Waterberg-Bojanala Priority Area (DEA, 2012a)
Using a 75% data capture threshold, it is clear that all the monitoring stations in the VTAPA and HPA have been out of compliance with the historical and/or current annual National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) (Figure 1)
The Zamdela, Witbank, Three Rivers and Sharpeville sites were non-compliant with the historical standard. From this it is clear that significant problems related to the concentrations of PM10 occur in the majority of the monitoring sites in the VTAPA and HPA
Summary
While this legislation has been enacted, certain areas have been identified as being of particular concern and have been declared as air quality priority areas, these include: the Vaal Triangle Airshed Priority Area (VTAPA; DEAT, 2006), the Highveld Priority Area (HPA;DEAT, 2007) and the Waterberg-Bojanala Priority Area (DEA, 2012a). Notable increases have been seen in the Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces (where VTAPA and HPA are located), with increases from ~3.5 to ~4.7 million in Gauteng, and ~600 000 to ~900 000 motor vehicles in Mpumalanga have been recorded (ENATIS, 2018)
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