Reuben Winter's (Totems / P.H.F. / Caroles / Roidz) "emo guitar" project, milk, play live from the bFM office for the third of our NZ Music Month Breakfast Live to Airs.
The Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ just released Our Air 2024, a three yearly report featuring data on air pollution levels and its impacts.
The report found that, while concentrations of various particulates had reduced, and overall air quality in Aotearoa had improved, air pollution had a much greater contribution to diseases and birth defects across the country than previously expected.
Oto spoke to Dr Joel Rindelaub, a senior lecturer in Chemical sciences at the University of Auckland, to discuss the report and the impacts of air pollution on the human body.
Winter is coming, and so is a projected increase in respiratory illnesses and COVID cases. Schools are particularly notorious breeding grounds for such diseases with children being more susceptible to respiratory illnesses.
Ultimately, this results in teachers also being subject to COVID and respiratory illnesses at a higher rate than other professions, and an increased number of teachers leaving the profession due to long COVID symptoms is worsening Aotearoa’s already severe teacher shortage.
For this week’s Get Action! Oto spoke to Tara Forde from Aotearoa Covid Action, to discuss a petition of hers calling for the government to prevent the spread of COVID in our schools by making improvements to school air quality and improving accessibility to Booster Vaccines and Rapid Antigen Tests.
If you'd like to sign this petition, you can find it here:
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