The Center for Air Quality’s Athens monitoring site serves a unique purpose in Ohio’s efforts to address issues related to air quality. One of only a few sites to have its own air quality modeling program, the site is known as a “supersite” because it uses 23 separate instruments to measure levels of gas pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone, as well as particulate levels and meteorological variables such as temperature, barometric pressure, rainfall and wind speed. By testing for a wide variety of variables, the site can define the chemical composition of plumes and connect them to the actual facilities responsible for generating the pollution.
The center issues daily forecasts for particulate pollution and ozone levels. “We have a compounded problem. We’re predicting the weather and how that will affect air quality,” said air monitoring research supervisor Gary Conley.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken a special interest in the Athens site because of its location. Known as a regional transport site, it is capable of seeing what pollutants are being passed through the region and being deposited in southeast Ohio. This allows the site to take true background pollution readings for the region. Such information is key to evaluating the effectiveness of government air quality regulations.
The center’s work addresses the often conflicting issues of public health and job creation. The center also addresses health issues that result from air pollutants. One such pollutant is mercury, which bioaccumulates in fish and ultimately finds its way into humans, where it has toxic effects on the brain. The Athens site is the only one measuring mercury deposition in the state and one of only 101 in the nation. “We don’t want to sacrifice public health for jobs,” Conley said.
At the same time, the center, which currently handles monitoring for Cleveland, hopes to contract with other cities in Ohio in the interest of keeping jobs and money in the state that would otherwise go to out-of-state facilities. “We can make it more affordable for everyone in the state if we can get several cities involved,” Conley said.
The Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs provides infrastructure and project support to the center through their participation in the Consortium for Energy, Economics and the Environment (CE3), an interdisciplinary partnership that examines energy production and its environmental and economic impact on the state and nation.
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