7 Motivation

Particulate matter less than 2.5µm in diameter (PM_2.5) is an air pollutant known to be harmful to human health even at low concentrations. Due to the size, particles can lodge deep within the lungs and pass into blood, affecting respiratory and cardiovascular systems. The risks associated with PM_2.5 exposure are reflected in the most recent WHO guidelines. These guidelines, released in 2021, set a series of interim targets of decreasing PM_2.5 concentrations and an end target annual average not exceeding 5µg/m³.

While there are multiple contributors to PM_2.5 pollution (such as industrial emissions, dust, wood heater smoke), bushfires in particular are a major source of PM_2.5 in Australia, ranging from controlled hazard reduction burns to the extraordinary bushfire season of 2019-2020. Health effects from the PM_2.5 produced from such burns (as opposed to non-bushfire PM_2.5) are not well-researched, in part due to limited data availability of bushfire-specific PM_2.5.

This dataset provides a prediction of total PM_2.5 concentration and flags to estimate the bushfire-specific portion, covering Australia from January 2001 to June 2020 with an update for January 2020 to December 2023. In conjunction with health data, it may be used to elucidate the health burden and impacts due to bushfire smoke PM_2.5 and plan for the mitigation of health effects in the future, particularly with increasing threat of unusually severe bushfire events.