Heaters worsen sickness—report

Press, 1 September 1986, Page 24

Heaters worsen sickness—report

NZPA-AAP Sydney Asthma and other respiratory ailments could be aggravated during winter in houses with flueless gas heaters and poor ventilation, a Sydney conference on clean air has been told. The New South Wales State Pollution Control Commission presented its findings to a conference workshop. The findings resulted from a two-year survey on indoor pollution in Sydney houses with bad ventilation and flueless

gas heaters. Five out of eight houses surveyed for one week each showed emissions of nitrogen' dioxide higher than the recommended levels.

A commission spokesman, Len Ferrari, said the study, the first of its kind in Australia, would be done on 50 more houses in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, and Canberra.

Conclusive findings .would not be available until the end of next year. Other sources of indoor pollution were smoking, emissions from stoves, heaters, open fires, vacuum-cleaners, and even hot water, which gave off a lot of chlorinated hydrocarbons, the workshop was told. One speaker said one shower or bath a day gave a person 80 per cent of his or her allowable daily intake of chlorinated hydrocarbons.