Larry Williams Drive

Pop quiz! What of these causes the highest number of premature New Zealand deaths?  Bowel cancer? Diabetes? Road crashes? Melanoma? Air pollution? This will seem unbelievable to many Kiwis, but according to the Ministry of the Environment and Statistics New Zealand, here in good old clean-and-green New Zealand, air pollution kills more people than all of those other causes, combined.  Think about that! Diabetes, bowel cancer, road crashes and melanoma... Put them in a blender and add them all together, and air pollution still comes out at the top of the macabre pops.  According to the study released today, even though air pollution standards have improved, in 2019, air pollution was associated with 3200 deaths!  In a country our size, with our wealth, and our regulatory framework, that's a disgraceful figure. According to the triennial study, one in ten deaths in 2019 was attributable to air pollution. The social costs are in the billions of dollars, and that doesn't include the increasing