In case you needed any more reason to resent Sydney’s cursed public transport system, it turns out the air in its underground train tunnels is poisonous — with one platform seeing air pollution rates at five times the recommended daily limit. Worse still, it appears the state government knew commuters and staff were breathing in this hazardous air on the daily and yet it didn’t alert us.
Information on air quality in underground train stations is publicly available in other cities like London and Seoul, but in Sydney it’s weirdly hard to come by.
Air pollution isn’t a problem not specific to Sydney, or even Australia, but all underground rail networks. Friction between train carriages, wheels, tracks and brakes can cause tiny metal particles to become dust or gas that we breathe in when we’re commuting, or when rail workers are working.
The dust, known as PM2.5 and PM10, was found to be lingering at alarming rates by The Sydney Morning Herald, which tested the air at 16 train stations above and below ground.
What it found is harrowing: the worst air quality was found at Platform 25 in Central (Illawarra/South Coast line, or Bondi Junction in the opposite direction), where investigators found air pollution was more than five times the recommended daily limit NSW Government is supposed to allow.
Platforms 1 and 3 at Town Hall were found to have more than double the pollution of outdoor areas, and air quality was even worse at Central, Wynyard, Macquarie University, Epping and North Ryde.
Transport for NSW told SMH it had “no significant concerns” about the air quality, which it said is managed across the underground network.
However, experts told the masthead that transport staff — who often work up to 12 hours per day — put their health at risk when exposed to this air pollution. Commuters, too, can be at risk because we’re so often stuck on these platforms during delays and train cancellations.
“We give people warnings when entering a road tunnel – wind your windows up and recirculate the air within the car because you don’t want the exhaust coming in while you’re driving,” UNSW environmental epidemiologist Professor Bin Jalaludin told SMH.
“There’s no reason not to apply warnings on train platforms.”
Transport Minister Jo Haylen told the masthead that she’s taking the findings “very seriously” and that we can expect some action soon. But why does it take an investigation by journalists for this stuff to be taken seriously in the first place?
As someone who has been catching trains from Central’s platform 25 since my first year in high school, all this information is alarming to say the least.
If you need me, I’ll be researching the best n95 masks.
