Dr Louise Woodward is a paediatrician and long-term resident of Darwin who has grown frustrated by the wilful disregard of public safety by fossil fuel companies and governments. She is advocating against the expansion of the gas industry due to the risk to human health and the climate. She successfully led a campaign with DEA and Parents for Climate Action for a senate inquiry into the Middle Arm gas hub proposed for Darwin harbour and is now working on a campaign for a federal Clean Air Act with the Climate and Health Alliance.
This year she founded an independent community air monitoring group called Community Health Air NT (CHANT) which has raised over $120,000 in just a few months to purchase a mobile air monitor to measure BTEX and other toxic pollutants that the EPA and governments have been neglecting to measure despite having a large, polluting LNG industry located close to a city full of people. The regulators reassure the public that the air is safe to breathe but without direct measurement, how do they know? CHANT hopes to show how a community can be empowered to take back agency when regulators and governments fail to protect public health.
Louise Woodward will present at the conference on the topic of: How citizen science is helping identify air pollution in the NT