How is your air quality monitored during SLO County’s ‘worst year for smoke’?
Smoke from California wildfires has inundated San Luis Obispo County residents in recent months, turning skies gray and making the sun glow red like an ember.
Nearly every smoky day in the county over the past two months broke previous measurement records for particulate matter, or, PM, kept since 1999, according to data from the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District (APCD).
“This year has been by far the worst year for smoke impacts that we’ve ever had,” said Karl Tupper, the APCD’s senior air quality scientist.
San Luis Obispo County sees smoke blow in from surrounding fires nearly every year. But the combination of higher than normal temperatures, bigger fires and weaker northwesterly winds that could not push the smoke out to the sea meant that the haze was thicker than ever and kept coming back, according to PG&E meteorologist John Lindsey.
This led the APCD to deploy its temporary air quality sensor, a tower-like device called an environmental beta-attentuation mass monitor, or E-BAM, in August to an area that does not usually have a sensor: Morro Bay.
That E-BAM then began reporting information to SLOCleanAir.org, the APCD’s website, and AirNow.gov, the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s website that reports air quality information from the district.
Before smoke filled San Luis Obispo County skies this fall, the only air quality sensor in Morro Bay was used to monitor ozone levels, not PM 2.5 — tiny inhalable particles measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller.
Wildfire smoke affects SLO County air quality
The air quality index, or, AQI, is measured by whichever pollutant has the highest concentration over a 24-hour period — whether that’s ozone, PM 2.5 or PM 10, inhalable particles with diameters of 10 micrometers or smaller.
The AQI ranges from 0 to 500. The higher the number, the worse the air quality.
For most days out of the year, San Luis Obispo County is in the 0 to 50 range, which means the air quality is good.
Due to smoke from recent wildfires, however, the AQI has reached as high as 292 in Atascadero in August, according to the APCD.
During that period in August, Morro Bay resident Michelle Jonelis said she kept checking Purple Air, a website that gathers data from air quality sensors and monitors around the world, “and they were reading very poor air quality.”
“But AirNow said that the air quality was fine,” Jonelis said.
After the temporary Morro Bay sensor was put up, the AirNow and APCD websites both had similar readings similar to those reported by Purple Air.
The APCD manages nine air quality monitoring stations and one temporary sensor placed in strategic locations around the county. The California Air Resources Board, the state’s leading air pollution and climate change agency, also maintains two air quality monitoring stations — one in San Luis Obispo and the other in Paso Robles.
Some residents say that as the climate changes and smoky skies become more common, having an air quality sensor is important to their livelihood.
“The people that I know that do have breathing problems or heat problems. ... They need to know as soon as possible if there are unhealthy particulates in the air,” Morro Bay resident Lucinda Ware said. “So if there’s not a detector that is giving us up-to-date information, that’s a bad thing.”
Why doesn’t Air Pollution Control District install more monitors?
The small Purple Air sensors and the APCD’s temporary device in Morro Bay are not as accurate as those at APCD’s permanent air quality monitoring stations, but they provide real-time information so residents can get a good idea of what the air quality is like near them, Tupper said.
“It would always be nice to have more monitors in more places,” Tupper said. “But we only have so many resources.”
The APCD has developed its network of air quality monitors over the past three decades, Tupper said, but things are constantly changing.
The California Air Resources Board is giving up its air quality monitor in San Luis Obispo — the only permanent one in the city. The APCD received a $19,300 grant from the EPA to keep that high-quality monitor in the city, Tupper said.
That grant will cover the costs associated with installing the permanent air quality monitor at the ACPD office, according to a letter sent to the APCD from the EPA awarding them the grant.
The monitors are expensive to maintain — especially since they require weekly or biweekly visits to check for damage and collect data — and while the EPA awards the APCD $5,000 a year for each permanent sensor it has, that funding is not guaranteed, Tupper said.
“We’re trying to keep the current network (of air quality monitors and sensors) that we have. We’re not trying to shrink it,” Tupper said.
The APCD has to maintain its network in order to monitor whether the area is complying with standards such as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead, according to the EPA. However, because San Luis Obispo County has few big cities, the APCD is not required to have monitors in every city or town.
According to the EPA, air monitors are located in population centers near busy roads, in city centers, at locations of concern such as schools and hospitals or in areas where experts expect to see the highest concentrations of pollutants.
The agency said it frequently requires monitoring in medium and large cities — even when air quality levels are good — because those are population centers.
Is Morro Bay pollution getting worse?
This is why Morro Bay does not typically have an air quality monitor. Most months out of the year, the city has excellent air quality due to fresh ocean breezes, community members and experts say.
But Morro Bay residents alike say this will change.
For Von Odermatt-Rapone, a Central Coast native who recently moved back to Morro Bay, keeping an eye on the air quality is vital to his health.
Odermatt-Rapone, 42, has Marfan syndrome, which affects the connective tissue in his body and has caused him to have heart problems. When the smoke and heat comes, he’s forced to stay indoors.
“When it first got bad, my weather app said it wasn’t bad here,” he said. “And then I went outside and was like ‘Whoa, this is definitely not (an AQI of) 58, this is more like 158.’”
Growing up in San Luis Obispo County, Odermatt-Rapone said he typically did not have any issues with air quality. But in recent years, he added, he’s invested in better air filters for his home and stayed indoors to avoid smoke.
“This last year and this year, in my recollection, seemed to be some of the worst years (for smoke) I’ve ever experienced living on the Central Coast,” he said.
Jonelis, who moved to Morro Bay from the Bay Area in August, said she worried about her kids when the smoke came because they attend school outdoors at Wishing Well School in Los Osos.
Because of the increased smoke impacts in the county, Jonelis is calling upon the APCD to install more air quality monitors so residents can have better data to rely on.
“This is the future of California — we’re going to have more and more and more wildfires per year,” she said. “So smoke is going to be an ongoing issue and we need to learn to live with it. Part of living with smoke is knowing what the air quality is so that you can minimize your exposure to unhealthy air and modifying your activities.”
Tupper said the APCD simply lacks the resources to install more air quality monitors and maintain them. The permanent air quality monitors cost about $22,000 and the temporary sensors cost about $12,000, not factoring in regular maintenance costs.
However, it is working with local citizens to compliment its already existing network with less expensive options such as the Purple Air sensors.
“Our regulatory network is the best quality that there is, but there’s gaps in it,” Tupper said. “I think it’s really useful to go look at the Purple Air map to try to fill in some of those gaps.”
The temporary air quality sensor in Morro Bay will remain there for now, Tupper said, but likely only for as long as there is an immediate threat of PM 2.5 levels rising again.
Where to look for the best air quality data
So, what’s the best way to find air quality data for San Luis Obispo County?
The APCD’s data pulls directly from their permanent monitors and temporary sensors, Tupper said, so it should be a first point of reference for residents.
That data, which includes the California Air Resources Board’s data from its monitors in San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles, can be found at SLOCleanAir.com, and it is updated every hour.
AirNow.gov is essentially the federal government’s version of the APCD’s website. It pulls its data from local and state regulatory boards and is updated hourly.
The EPA also launched a Fire and Smoke Map with the U.S. Forest Service that filled in some of the gaps from the local and state agencies with low-cost sensors, though those low-cost sensors are not as accurate.
That Fire and Smoke app shows a gray shaded area where smoke is present and is updated hourly.
Other air quality websites such as Purple Air, IQAir and Plume Labs and weather websites like AccuWeather and Wunderground, get their data from citizen-installed sensors that cost about $250 to $280 as well as state and local agencies, Tupper said.
Those sites are not always the most accurate, Tupper said, but do supply a good overall picture of what the air quality is like in various areas.
How to stay safe in unhealthy air quality
Children, older adults and people with existing respiratory illness and heart conditions are particularly vulnerable to poor air quality.
The San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District warned that if anyone smells smoke or sees ash falling from the sky, they should take the following precautions:
- Head indoors and remain indoors, if possible;
- Avoid strenuous outdoor activity;
- Close all windows and doors that lead outside to prevent bringing additional smoke inside; and
- Stop any outdoor activity immediately and seek medical attention if experiencing a cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, exhaustion, light-headedness or chest pain.
Although the use of masks is encouraged to protect from COVID-19, a cloth mask will not protect from inhaling wildfire smoke, the ACPD said.
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 2:16 PM.
