Joppa Becomes Citizen Science Case Study; Next Portable Monitor Training Session Oct 28th

You’re Invited to Train on the Same Portable Monitors & Get Access to Our Monitor Lending Library…For FREE

CITIZEN SCIENCE TRAINING SESSION

SUNDAY OCTOBER 28th

1-3 pm

GOODWORK CO-WORKING SPACE

1808 S. GOOD-LATIMER

 

Let us know you’re coming: RSVP  downwindersatrisk@gmail.com

 

Downwinders is proud to announce that our precedent-setting use of portable PM monitors to help Joppa residents defeat two proposed batch plants earlier this year was selected by manufacturer Aeroqual as a case study showing how its new air pollution technology has made a positive difference in the world.

Joppa will join other examples from places like Tanzania, Iraq, India, and Peru on the Aeroqual website. It will be the only success story attributable to a citizens group as opposed to a government agency, university, or business.

“Timing is everything” is a cliche but in this case the banality is on point.

Aeroqual’s new 500 series hand held portable PM monitors had only become available in January of this year, at exactly the time Downwinders was looking for a device that was highly reliable but not prohibitively expensive. In offering the 500, New Zealand-based Aeroqual carved its own market niche and met our criteria like a glove – more reliable than the extremely cheap consumer sensors you can buy on Amazon and less expensive than similarly calibrated machines affordable only to universities, industry and government.

Because they were so new, we had to call Aeroqual in New Zealand to order them directly. We were their first US customers. Downwinders ordered two for deployment in our PM Pollution Prevention campaign. When they arrived in late February, they were the only ones being used between New Zealand and the US.

Since then, the company has made huge inroads into the US market, to the point of partnering with the EPA in Los Angles to establish a 100-monitor air network for Particulate Matter and smog pollution, and being considered for the monitor in the City of Dallas/Texas Nature Conservancy Breathe Easy study.

Downwinders’ original plan was to use the monitors to document PM levels along DART routes as research for our Green Streets bus electrification effort and set out for a couple of weeks doing nothing but measuring levels of PM inside and outside of buses.

We were still doing that when we got a call from the Joppa Freedman’s Township Association to request we turn our attention to their fight over two new batch plants.

Aeroqual’s portable machines provided the first, and so far only, air sampling in Joppa. They recorded significantly higher PM levels than the official EPA site some nine miles away. This was the same EPA site Dallas city staff was using to give Joppa the all-clear.  The fact that the Aeroqual monitors came factory-calibrated out of the box and were supervised in their use by a local atmospheric scientist enhanced their credibility.

Their results were widely publicized only days before the City Council vote and combined with opposition on the ground, contributed to the council vote against the batch plant permits. It was the first time in local history, and we’re pretty sure in Texas or even the country, that this new technology became a tool for citizens in a successful permitting battle. And that’s why we’re ending up as the first citizens group case study for Aeroqual. 

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: MAKE HISTORY

CITIZEN SCIENCE TRAINING SESSION

SUNDAY OCTOBER 28th    1-3 pm

GOODWORK CO-WORKING SPACE

1808 S. GOOD-LATIMER

Let us know you’re coming: RSVP  downwindersatrisk@gmail.com

This training session is a chance to become familiar with this new technology and work your way toward being able to check out these portable monitors on your own. No previous experience required. No math or engineering degrees necessary. If you can push buttons and read numbers, you can do this. It only takes two hours.

Along with first-timers, graduates from our first classes of Apprentice Citizen Scientists are invited back to take a field trip with our PM Committee and step-up to “Researcher” status. After one more outing, they’ll be given permission to check out the monitors for their own purposes or to help with our projects.

We’re entering a new era of Do-It-Yourself Environmental Protection. Learn how you can join it.