Doctors have pleaded with the state government to install air quality monitors in the Yarra Valley to alert vulnerable residents to dangerous smoke pollution during the autumn burn-off season.
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| Yarra Ranges residents Nicole Fox, left, and Jennifer Conway are concerned about the impact of burn-offs on respiratory health. |
Supported by Yarra Ranges Council, which voted unanimously to back the push for better monitoring, the doctors say smoke pollution during the coronavirus pandemic is a dangerous health risk for their patients.
The Healesville-Yarra Glen region's death rate relating to respiratory system diseases is already nearly double the state average, according to local council data.
"There is growing fear and anxiety in the Yarra Valley about what the COVID-19 pandemic will mean ... and we are now facing months of smoke haze when already there are shortages of medications including asthma inhalers," the doctors write in a letter to Minister for Environment and Climate Lily D'Ambrosio and the Environment Protection Agency.
Read the story from The Age by Miki Perkins - “‘Months of haze': Doctors demand smoke pollution check as pandemic raises burn-off fear.”
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