Dr Amanda Wheeler is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO whose work focuses on the health effects of poor air quality, from bushfire smoke and wood heater pollution to indoor air and safe public spaces. She co-leads the SCaW Hub’s Impact Priority 4: Air Quality stream with Professor Fay Johnston at the University of Tasmania. She works with researchers, governments and communities to understand what people breathe and how to better protect them from poor air quality.
How did your career path lead you to air quality research?
During my PhD in London, I used personal monitors on children to see what they were exposed to as they went about their day, using equipment generously loaned by Professor Petros Koutrakis at Harvard University.
That led to a postdoc at Harvard, where I began looking at the health effects of air pollution, particularly for people who had recently had heart attacks or were living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
I then spent more than 10 years at Health Canada, building an exposure assessment group and working on outdoor and indoor air quality. After moving to Australia, most of my work has focused on smoke, because bushfires are such a major source of poor air quality here.
What is the main challenge your research is addressing?
The air quality stream in the Hub broadly asks the question: how do we reduce exposure to poor air and protect people’s health?
Air quality is a major risk factor for poor health. It affects people with asthma, chronic respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Older people and children are also at higher risk.
Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfires showed how serious smoke exposure can be. Around 400 people died as a result of smoke exposure, which was more than died from the fires themselves. About 3,000 people were hospitalised.
Even people not considered especially vulnerable can be badly affected during a major smoke event; so we need practical ways to prepare communities, warn people earlier and create safe shelters.
How has working with Indigenous communities shaped your approach?
This has been one of the most important learning areas for me. We were looking at who receives air quality forecasts and how they receive them particularly as smoke is not treated as a hazard in the same way fire is, so there are not clear communication frameworks around it.
One group we wanted to listen to was Indigenous communities, because we know Indigenous people are at higher risk for many of the health conditions affected by poor air quality.
But smoke also means different things to different people. In many Indigenous contexts, smoke is a part of smoking ceremonies and cultural practice. So you cannot just arrive and say, “smoke is bad”.
We worked through yarning circles, asked communities what they were concerned about, how they would like to receive information, and what support would actually help. The biggest lesson for me has been that we cannot impose the problem as we see it. We need to listen to what matters to communities.
What has the Sustainable Communities and Waste Hub made possible?
The Hub has created a platform for a range of work on air quality that would have been very hard to do otherwise, under five main air quality projects.
As well as our project on Indigenous health and air quality, another project, led by Catherine Emerson at CSIRO, models air quality scenarios in Australian capital cities by 2050 under different climate futures.
Professor Fay Johnston leads work on wood heaters, and in places like Snug in Tasmania and Armidale in New South Wales, we work with local councils and communities to understand how to reduce wood smoke and help households move to cleaner heating.
Professor Donna Green at UNSW is leading work on safe spaces during poor air quality events, including libraries and public buildings in regional areas where large shopping centres are not always an option.
We are also working on how Australia develops air quality guidelines, so regulation can better reflect current evidence.
What is a common misunderstanding about air pollution?
People often do not appreciate how polluting wood heaters are. There is still a strong attachment to wood heaters. They are seen as natural, cosy or part of the character of a home; but burning wood can cause poor air quality. It is not safe just because it is natural.
For many people in urban areas, a wood heater is not essential. They already have another form of heating. So the next challenge is behaviour change: what would help someone who owns a wood heater to say, “I actually do not need this”?
What changes would you like to see over the next decade?
Phasing out wood heaters would be a very good first step. I would also like to see better ways to protect people from poor air quality, because bushfires are not going away. Climate change will mean drier conditions, more fires and more intense fires.
We need solutions that help people become more resilient. That includes better warnings, safer public spaces, cleaner heating and homes that are better sealed and more energy efficient.
Read more about the research theme:
https://www.nespsustainable.edu.au/research/impact-priority-4-improving-air-quality
Learn more about air quality research across Australia:
Map: Indigenous air quality, asthma and Indigenous health research
