An expanded network of monitors will focus on fine particulates and ground level ozone that can exacerbate asthma, a disease that inflames the airway and makes it harder to breathe.
Roughly 8% to 10% of children have asthma nationally, said Christina Yoka, chief of air pollution outreach at the Department of Health, but for areas of Cleveland those rates approach 24%.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the health departmet a $500,000 grant to allow for the purchase of a mobile air-monitoring unit that will measure the presence of fine and coarse particulates as well as ground-level ozone, according to Bryan Sokolowski, chief of monitoring at the Cleveland Department of Public Health.
The money also will enable the city to buy about 30 lower-cost sensors that can detect fine particulates. While not as precise as the mobile unit, the sensors will be able to provide helpful comparative data, said Nick Barendt, executive director of the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems at Case Western Reserve University.
The institute is one of several partners working with the Cleveland health department to devise a plan for assessing air quality in areas disproportionately burdened by pollutants, such as factory and tailpipe emissions and road dust, and where buildings with adequate air conditioning may be lacking.
“We’ve built great partnerships over the last couple years during COVID,” said Bryan Sokolowski, chief of monitoring at the city’s health department. " ... This is sort of building on that.”
The mobile unit will be mounted on a trailer and deployed in historically redlined areas of the city not covered by the health department’s 14 permanent air-monitoring locations around Cuyahoga County. Those sites are designed to detect EPA-designated “criteria pollutants” that include fine and coarse particulates, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ground level ozone and lead.
The Cleveland area meets federal standards for all criteria pollutants, except for ground level ozone, which can be a major irritant for asthma sufferers, Sokolowski said.
Ground level ozone is created when nitrogen oxide, created by fossil fuel combustion, and volatile organic compounds, present in chemical vapors, mix in the atmosphere and are exposed to the ultraviolet rays of the sun.
It takes about three hours for the ground level ozone to form and when it does it can be considerably downwind from where the base components are emitted, Sokolowski said.
That could explain why the highest readings in the region for ground level ozone are registered in Eastlake, even though the emissions that create the ground level ozone may come from other places, such as the industrial flats and heavily congested highways, Sokolowski said.
“It’s not a source specific pollutant,” he said.
The mobile unit will take about a year to deliver, Sokolowski said, because it still must be designed and manufactured, but the smaller sensors should arrive sooner.
The sensors also will be placed in disadvantaged areas where there are concerns about air quality and asthma rates. They will supplement some 40 similar devices that are already deployed around Cuyahoga County, mostly on the outside of public library buildings, Barendt said. They are about the size of a hockey puck and have a tiny fan that draws in air. A laser mechanism estimates the amount of fine particulates – 2.5 microns or less – and uploads the data every two minutes.
Researchers expect the data to help pinpoint air quality hotspots in Cleveland and provide the impetus for setting policies and strategies to reduce the hazards. The data could also guide the health depatment in deciding if a factory should be inspected for compliance with its emissions permit, Sokolowski said.
Ground-level ozone and fine particulates can worsen asthma by getting into the deep alveoli of the lungs and causing inflammation, said Dr. Maeve Macmurdo of the Respiratory Institute at Cleveland Clinic.
Particulates and ozone, which can be cheaply and reliably monitored, can also serve as good markers for the presence of other pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, said Macmurdo, who is part of the collaborative working with the health department.
The data obtained by the new monitors will be included on a public dashboard that can be accessed to determine real-time air quality in specific neighborhoods. The information can also help identify specific reasons for bad air, such as proximity to factories or idling traffic, and to suggest ways to mitigate the problems.
Having precise measurements should also help make the case for taking action. People may be pretty certain that a problem exists, Macmurdo said, “but sometimes it does take hard data to make change.”
The granular data that the mobile unit and additional sensors will provide will be supplemented with interviews of residents who can discuss specific areas of concern and those times when air quality is particularly bad, said Andrew Curtis, professor of spatial epidemiology at Case Western Reserve University.
Such a “multi-sensory approach” will allow researchers to determine more precisely what is happening rather than settling for a more general conclusion, for example, that the air quality is bad in central Cleveland.
Knowing more about when and where pollution levels are high can lead to strategies that “make life a little easier for people in the neighborhoods,” he said.
What future actions may be taken remains to be seen, Curtis and others said. But one example might be asking a factory in a high-pollution area to limit its truck traffic to a certain time of day. Or making sure certain buildings have air conditioning that can provide respites for a community when conditions outside are particularly unhealthy.
“It’s going to be tricky to completely change the system,” he said.
Barendt said there are also researchers who want to use the air quality data to conduct studies on patients to determine how environmental exposure may be affecting the long-term progression of their cardivacular and respiraty ailments.
It could all have the makings of one of the country’s, if not the world’s, most comprehensive environmental monitoring systems, he said, “which is pretty exciting."
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