Canberra air quality worst in world

Canberra’s air quality is almost twice as bad as that of Delhi after the city was blanketed in smog from the bushfires.

Parliament House is shrouded in a thick smoke haze. Picture: AAP.

Residents of the nation’s capital might be forgiven for thinking they had woken in Kolkata rather than Canberra on Wednesday as a suffocating blanket of smog settled across the city.

Driven by billowing clouds of smoke from bushfires on NSW’s south coast, the haze was so thick on Wednesday, Canberra’s air quality was officially the worst in the world — and almost twice as bad as New Delhi’s.

At least 12 people were admitted to Canberra hospital after suffering adverse health effects from the smog, as the Monash air quality station in the south of Canberra recorded readings of up to 4758 on Wednesday afternoon – 20 times above the 200 threshold where air is classified as hazardous.

Acting chief health officer Dr Paul Dugdale said it was the worst smoke the ACT had experienced since the 2003 bushfires, which killed four people.

“I’m not surprised people are being hospitalised,” he said.

“It’s a difficult time for people with heart and lung conditions who are sensitive to smoke.

“If you have an asthma action plan then put it into effect.”

Visibility was so severely reduced from a standard 10km to only a few hundred metres that an international flight from Doha was cancelled, although other flights are continuing to take off and land unimpeded.

The high concentration of smoke set off alarms all across the territory, with ACT fire and rescue chief officer Mark Brown saying firefighters had spent a good part of the morning responding to false alarms.

“Fire and rescue had to respond methodically to those buildings and investigate and reset all those alarms,” he said.

“It took a lot of resources and we actually didn’t even finish the task until early this morning.”

While conditions eased on Wednesday night, Canberra’s air quality, calculated by a concentration of pollutants, was still 970 – almost 600 points worse than next-placed Delhi.

A Bureau of Meteorology spokeswoman said there would be little respite over the coming days and, while Canberra’s air quality was set to improve marginally as the week went on, the levels would still remain dangerous for those with heart or lung conditions.

Air quality in Australia’s other major cities will slightly deteriorate over the course of the week as fires continue to burn across the country, although conditions would not be as bad as seen in previous weeks.

Smog warnings were in place for the NSW mid-North Coast, Northern Rivers and Northern Tablelands regions.

Sydney was forecast to have ‘fair’ air quality on Thursday and potentially through to the weekend where predicted temperature spikes may reignite fires across the state.

Despite out of control fires in East Gippsland claiming lives and property, Melbourne’s air quality is forecast to be “good” over the coming week as westerly and southerly winds draw the smoke away from the Victorian capital.