Improving Victoria’s Air Quality - Independent assurance report to Parliament

Audit overview:

Clean air is important for health and wellbeing, and is an issue of community concern. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that statistically significant evidence supports the correlation between poor air quality and negative health impacts. 

The air we breathe primarily contains nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapour and various inert gases. It also contains pollutant components, such as ozone and particulate matter (PM), which arise from human and natural processes and can affect human health. 

In Victoria, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) is the agency primarily responsible for monitoring, regulating and reporting on the state’s air quality. EPA is subject to a range of legislation including the Environment Protection Act 1970 (the Act) and state environment protection policies that incorporate 
national standards on ambient air quality. 

EPA undertakes three types of air monitoring: 

• ambient air (external air environment) quality monitoring that provides EPA with information on general air quality and regional pollution at designated monitoring stations 
• campaign (local condition or investigation) monitoring that provides information on local air quality and pollution issues 
• emergency (incident) monitoring, as part of the Victorian emergency management system, to respond to major pollution events. 

The Act provides EPA with a number of tools to regulate the activities of commercial and industrial operators, including licensing and approvals, compliance monitoring and enforcement instruments. 

This audit assessed whether Victoria’s air quality meets ozone and PM standards. We examined EPA’s monitoring of, reporting on and regulation of air quality during the audit, including an analysis of EPA’s air quality monitoring data from 2010 to 2016.