Historic Industrial Emissions Damaged Australia's Ancient Murujuga Rock Art More Widely Than Known, Study Finds
Industrial pollution from past decades has damaged a larger stretch of the Murujuga rock art in Western Australia than previously understood, according to the third annual report of a government-funded research program released in August 2026.
The Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program, known as MRAMP, is described by the Western Australian government as the most extensive scientific study examining the impact of industrial air emissions on the rock engravings — called marni — that dot the Burrup Peninsula, also known as Murujuga. The carvings, estimated to be up to 50,000 years old, hold deep cultural and spiritual significance for Indigenous Australians (Reuters).
MRAMP's Year 3 public summary, published on 24 August 2026, identifies three reactive gases of concern: sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and ammonia (NH₃). The report found that concentrations of all three at Murujuga are now mostly well below relevant thresholds. In other words, the air today is cleaner. But the damage already done is visible, and the report points to historic sulfur emissions from previous industrial activity as the likely cause.
A peer-reviewed article in Scientific Reports (Nature), published in March 2026, reached a similar conclusion: that the damage to the rock art is likely historic rather than ongoing. That study, titled "Impacts of industrial emissions on rock art at Murujuga, Western Australia," also challenged the prevailing acid deposition theory — the idea that acidic fallout from emissions steadily dissolves the rock surface — as flawed. The MRAMP findings, drawing on multiple lines of monitoring data, go further in mapping the geographic extent of the damage.
The findings land at a delicate moment for Murujuga's international standing. In May 2025, a UNESCO advisory body recommended against granting World Heritage listing to the rock art, citing pollution risks from nearby industrial plants (Reuters). The new report complicates that picture: current gas levels are low, but the legacy of past emissions has left a mark on stone that has survived tens of thousands of years.
The Western Australian government has also published an "Interim Environmental Quality Criteria Update 2025" alongside the monitoring studies report, setting benchmarks for acceptable pollutant levels near the rock art. A separate earlier air quality study by the state's Department of Water and Environmental Regulation recorded sulfur dioxide at 108 parts per trillion — a reading the new program now contextualises within its broader multi-year dataset.
Industry and government have previously maintained that there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence for an adverse impact of emissions on the Murujuga petroglyphs, as noted in a 2024 academic article by JL Black published by Taylor & Francis. The MRAMP report and the Scientific Reports paper together add weight to the body of peer-reviewed literature documenting that impact — though the question of how much damage occurred, and over precisely what area, continues to be refined as the monitoring program enters its next phase.
