Air Quality, Who To Believe
By 250 News
Yesterday, an Air Quality Advisory was issued for Prince George. But you would never know that if you had relied on the Ministry of Environment’s new pilot project "AirPlay" to plan your day.
Based on the weather system and the information you see here, the Advisory is expected to remain in effect until tomorrow. The Ministry of the Environment says it only issues advisories "when the air quality objective is exceeded, health effect risks from fine particulate start well below that level."
The Air Quality objective for PM10 is 50 µg/m3 for a 24-hour average. Here are the readings as of 8:00 AM September 5th
| Prince George | Air Quality Index | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site | Air Quality Rating | AQI | CO | NO2 | O3 | PM10 | SO2 | ||||||||
| 1h | 8h | F | 1h | F | 1h | F | 24h | F | 1h | 24h | F | ||||
| BCR Warehouse | Poor | 89 | 89 | ||||||||||||
| CBC Transmitter | Good | 6 | 6 | ||||||||||||
| Gladstone School | Fair | 36 | 36 | 0 | 2 | ||||||||||
| Jail | Good | 5 | 0 | 5 | |||||||||||
| Lakewood | N/A | ||||||||||||||
| Plaza 400 | Fair | 50 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ? | 6 | 50 | 0 | 4 | |||||
Meantime, over at the Ministry’s pilot project www.airplaytoday.org site, a very different message was being delivered.
So, do you dust off the bike and go for a ride, or head out for a hike? Who do you believe?
It is a problem first outlined when we learned about the pilot project ( see story)
Here is the problem. The AirPlay site measures four components, ozone, PM 2.5, SO2 and NO2. There is no recording of PM10 which is a primary problem in this region.
AirPlay index is based on a three hour rolling average, not the 24 hour average used by the Ministry for the Air Quality Index, thre are some who say the AirPlay index is more accurate and more immediate. Although the two ratings are not supposed to be "compared", comparison is inevitable if both are measuring the risk to health posed by pollutants in the air.
Comparisons are also likely if, as in the case of the current situation, you have one branch of the Ministry’s Air Quality Department advising people not to go outdoors or engage in outdoor exercise, while another branch is saying fly at it and breathe deep!
Ministry of the Envirnoment people in Prince George know the two systems are confusing especially when they seem to contradict each other "This is a problem we have pointed out before" says Dennis Fudge of the Ministry’s office in P.G. "Hopefully as the pilot project progresses and some fine tuning is done we can eliminate the problem."
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Posted by: REALIST on September 6 2006 9:23 AM
WHY DIDN'T jAGO HANG IN THERE TO RESOLVE THIS PROBLEM?
Time for a couple more expensive studies-just to keep the dust blowing-oops--ball rolling.
Actually, if it wasn't affecting so many people health wise-it would surely be some kind of a joke-but not a laughing matter joke.
How long do the residents of Prince George cope with this problem. It has now been over 40 years-so guess there has been no rush.
We must all be a little simple to keep putting up with breathing problems.