Well it turns out, not enough of us.

Health Canada recently released an Environics’ Survey that examined our knowledge and attitudes about air quality – and the survey results will have profound changes on how air quality is managed and reported in Canada.

If you are like the one-in-seven Canadians surveyed, you are probably saying “so what” at this point and may be thinking about your dinner plans. Well don’t make your shopping list just yet. It seems that air quality affects us all. We just don’t know it yet.

The study found a significant difference between our understanding that air quality affects our health and our awareness of our own local risk factors. About 96% of Canadians believe air quality affects health to some degree; yet few Canadians seek out air quality information regularly.

A majority of us continue to rely on our sense to tell us when the air is ‘bad’. And it seems that we tend to think about the long term effects of poor air quality but are less good at identifying the immediate impact on health unless “the connection has been made directly through a personal experience”.

So why is it that even those of us living in the most polluted parts of the country do not seem to make the connection between air pollution and our own health?

The Survey authors suggest our collective head-in-the-sand approach might be due to a “they must be talking about someone else” reaction or even a “this is too big for me to think about” response.

But perhaps we are not getting information we know how to use.

When Environics compared provinces that had the highest (BC) and lowest (Alberta) air quality awareness, they found one critical difference – the Air Quality Health Index.

Launched in BC in 2006, the Air Quality Health Index is the first air quality measurement tool in the world that reports the health impact of the air we all breathe. It makes the connection for us. BC residents have been learning about the Index and now use it to manage exposure during times when the air quality is poor – like in the fires of 2010.

Those same fires created the worst air quality in Alberta that has ever been recorded in the province. But without the AQHI, residents had no way of knowing how the outside air was affecting their health. That is changing. Seeing the success, the Government of Alberta committed to a province-wide launch of the Air Quality Health Index in the summer of 2011. Now the AQHI is reported across the country.

Ask us again in a few years. It appears Canadians do care about the air and this new tool will help equip them in making decisions toward improved personal health.