GIVING DAY PAYS FOR CITIZEN SCIENCE
Downwinders is a entirely local group,
run by board members who live in DFW,
and funded by local contributions. Like yours.
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TO SECURELY CONTRIBUTE TO DOWNWINDERS. THANKS
What Your Contribution Pays For:
Citizen Science
In the past 18 months, Downwinders at Risk has become the leading sponsor of environmental Citizen Science projects in DFW. Your Giving Day contribution today will help us pay for the following:
The Wise County Ozone Project
powered portable ozone monitoring station (ATLAS) so we could deploy them anywhere in Wise County. This July they were installed on site and now a non-profit clean air group is performing the air quality monitoring duties of the state and federal government – all for about $13- $14,000 dollars.
This is the purest piece of citizen science we’re committed to. We’re not sure what we’ll find. But we’re not afraid to take on a basic job government is supposed to be doing.Portable Monitors: Training and Lending Library
Shannon Gribble and Cresanda Allen on a monitoring run in Joppa
Earlier this year we bought two portable Particulate Matter (PM) monitors that had just come onto the market from a
New Zealand company, Aeroqual. Calibrated at the factory, these monitors were better than anything else on the market for the price – $1600 each.
Shortly after taking delivery, Joppa residents asked us to bring them to that neighborhood to sample what the air they were breathing was like even before two proposed new batch plants opened there. Our monitors recorded levels of PM pollution much higher than those found at the only official PM monitor in Dallas County hosts, nine miles away – the same monitor city staff was trying to use to say how clean Joppa air was. Our results sealed the defeat the new Joppa batch plants.
With the help of the Dallas Sierra Club and others contributing to the May 22nd Joppa benefit, we were able to buy a third Portable PM Monitor for use exclusively in Joppa, where it now resides 24/7. This December we’ve budgeted to buy two more, giving us a total of five by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, EPA and Areoqual established a national partnership for air quality monitoring, enhancing the credibility of our monitors and our results.
This Saturday, members of our PM Committee will be hosting free public training sessions on how to use our portable monitors in the field. When you’ve completed three field trips with our team, we’re giving you the chance to ‘”check-out” the portables for your own use or to further help us research local PM levels at specific sites.