The air quality on Wellington's golden mile is as bad as some of the worst polluted sections of clogged multi-lane motorway networks in the country. NIWA is updating its national road transport air pollution map which uses samples from 1000 sites around the country. He said the old diesel buses and trucks were preventing the country from having some of the lowest urban air pollution levels in the world. New Zealand had a relatively large number of old dirty diesels, he said, and these had a disproportionately negative impact on air quality. "Given our isolation and windiness we really should have the best urban air quality of almost anywhere in the world," he said.

Source: Stuff December 29, 2019 06:56 UTC