The idea of funneling all highway traffic through the bowl to maximize the tail pipe effect....

Like many other Prince George residents I am a latecomer when it comes to being concerned about our poor air quality. Does anyone know if there has been any scientific research done in the past which may indicate what the main probable cause is of the bad air quality which Prince George has experienced over the past week or so? Is it due to road dust or our large industrial establishments? My nose tells me that a fairly large portion of the problem is due to our large industrial establishments.

hi Charles,
some research has been done.
Check out Peter Jackson at UNBC for one...
other studies are being done too. In many people's opinion, the "dust" bit is overblown.

The BC Min.Environment explanation constantly seems to be "dust," but there are many indicators to the contrary. . . particularly when we are looking at high pm2.5 readings that don't come from dust - and pm10 comes from industry too, not only dust.

Hope yu keep up the interest in seeing improvements to the air here because it is really something else!

Here are the results from one of the stations in a North Carolina study (published 2004) to determine source contribution to the PM2.5 fraction

- secondary sulfate (4.58±1.92 µg m3)

- wood combustion (2.29±1.65 µg m3)

- diesel exhaust (1.68±0.56 µg m3)

- secondary ammonium (1.59±0.36 µg m3)

- secondary nitrate 1.03±0.40 µg m3)

- paved road dust (0.50±0.32 µg m3)

- meat cooking (0.51±0.19 µg m3)

- gasoline exhaust (0.11±0.10 µg m3)

- vegetative detritus (0.11±0.10 µg m3)

Notice meat cooking (presumably from the exhausts of various restaurants - you know, the stuff you smell around KFC, the Keg, A&W, etc) shows up at a higher level than gasoline exhaust.

Does that give you any idea of how important it is to have all those idle free zones around town with respect to PM emissions? There is more than just trans fat in the fast food connection to health equation.

Then again, I am told that the people in North Carolina really love their barbequed meats.

Notice also that diesel exhaust contibutes more than 10 times as much as gasoline exhaust. Again, likely a good measure of industrial traffic contibution versus commuter/private car contribution.

I just drove to Houston, BC on Friday night and couldn't help but notice 3 bee hive burners still cranking out polution.

I thought these were supposed to be put out of service a few years ago. Doesn't the Ministry of Environment have any balls to enforce their own laws? Makes me sick. And we can't even light a backyard firepit to roast weiners. Chester