You want dust!
just go down the bypass

Too many unpaved areas on first avenue with tons of truck traffic on them. Has the city ever heard of dust control spray.

You want dust!
Just go anywhere

yep, blame the dust for the BAD air!! Don't deal with the real problem.

Prince George doesn't get much right! Everything is half cooked here. The roads are disgraceful, the air is bad, the crime is out of control, and we HAVE POTHOLES!

And now, they are going to send these bags full of dust to Ontario, and eventually to the UK for analysis?? What a waste of money. Fix the frikken roads, and we will have less dust to bag, to send to the UK!

What a pathetic lot we have running this hole!!!

So, inquiring minds want to know whether those conductiong this study have ever heard of vacuums.

Maybe someone involved with this study can identify why something as simple as a shop vacuum would not be a more effective tool to suck up everything but the finest particles. The filter could be removed after each patch and it and its content added to the sample for that patch.

These are students doing a scientific study, for god's sake. This is not the City workers.

It says: "The study is being conducted in conjunction with Environment Canada and with a study underway in Manchester England."

Road dust is not unique to PG.

Neither are potholes.

Neither are universities.

BTW, speaking of universities and wonderful studies, I wonder whatever happened to the research going on with respect to the use of sawdust as an aggregate for concrete blocks.

For those who might be interested in the connection that Environment Canada might have with this, here is the methodology used to estimate particulate release of road dust into the air due to vehicular traffic and a cursory description of base data collection for that calculation.

http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/env_reg/er/documents/pa9e0008/APP_A.PDF

I am very happy to see that they are doing this type of study. A complete analysis as to the nature and percentages of the *dust* particles will help us find out how we can take measures to improve the air quality.

Haven't we studied this to death already? Oh well, I guess if you spend all your time 'studying', you don't actually have to do anything to fix the problem.

Conclusion:
YES! It is dust.

put a bag behind a city transit bus and they will get some really good samples from all over the city.the buses put more dust into the air than some logging trucks.

It appears as with many things, to some people dust is dust, jsut as much as wine is wine and beer is beer and beef is beef and a house is a house.

Attached is an abstract of a similar study done in Barcelona two years ago. The idea is to find out particulars such as the chemical compostion of the dust since the types of materials and chemicals will affect the human body differently. Also to find the concentration of each plus the total mixture concentration since that also varies by area.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH3-4V47CKV-C&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a63463b46c5d88535e9043b69e841ad9

The bag behind the bus will not provide any region specific information. Igt does, however, determine how much the bus kicks up versus another type of vehicle with a similar collection device.

They do actually have more sophisticated methods than bags. They have monitors mounted in wheel wells which will give a reading of the amount of dust kicked up by each wheel on a vehicle.

One more from Finland which gives another persepctive of the potential utility of such information.

http://www.ytv.fi/ENG/airquality/research/results/abstracts/road_dust.htm

Ain't science, and the human quest to understand how things work fun? Just think, we could get rid of universities and teaching people how to gather knowledge using the scientific method and just go with the school of hard knocks.

the sad part is that we will gain nothing but knowledge because we can't elliminate dust. Just like climate change, we'll just have to live with it.

One don't need a masters degree to see the dust in this town!

Some of us are lucky to have knowledgeable neighbours.