YESTERDAY, A SOUTH AFRICAN AIR QUALITY TRAGEDY

• News & Highlights

My heart sank as I drove through Pietermaritzburg yesterday and experienced some of the worst air pollution that I have encountered in our beautiful country to date. The New England Landfill was on fire, again! But this time, the smoke had enveloped the entire city. Like you, I care deeply about the health of our people, about air quality and about the preservation of our environment.

The Pietermaritzburg landfill fire was an ominous site to behold and in many respects could be considered a South African tragedy especially by those of us who work in air quality:

I snapped a picture with my cell phone but it could not do justice to the haze that obscured one’s vision on most of Pietermaritzburg’s streets:

Even 11 km away and many hours after the blaze had started, the plume was still visible:

We plotted the schools that are located in near proximity to the landfill and were horrified to see how exposed our children are to these dangerous emissions. The landfill is circled in yellow and the schools are named with yellow text: