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SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — In an effort to keep an eye on Sioux City’s air quality, the Iowa Environmental Council (IEC) has asked residents to help them out.
Due to a lack of funding, the IEC turned towards the Sioux City community for help with collecting data. And now at least three homeowners and one non-profit are keeping an eye on air quality.
“PurpleAir monitors are a commercial brand of air monitors that show you what particulate matter pollution is within your area. They track what’s called PM, 2.5 and PM stands for particulate matter. This particulate matter it’s really tiny. It’s microscopic. It’s smaller than, many times smaller than, the width of a hair,” said Jordan Oster, the energy program director with the Iowa Environmental Council.
The Iowa Environmental Council said local industry plays a part in Sioux City’s air quality.
“We know we have MidAmerican coal plants that are producers up here of PM 2.5. There’s also agricultural processing and heavy industry. You know, these things all are products of those processes. And, you know, they send up particulate matter into our neighborhoods,” said Oster.
These air quality monitors provide a live feed of an area and show past data as well.
“We have a range here on the bottom that shows healthy to unhealthy air. You can see 33 is in the air quality category. You see it here, on average, the last week they’ve been reading at a 52, that’s more in the yellow category,” said Oster.
If an air monitor reaches above 100, IEC said a person with respiratory or cardiac problems could experience exacerbated issues.
One homeowner said when she first installed hers, she was shocked by the results.
“Some days are very scary because the air quality is bad. And I think especially being in a low-income area where people don’t always have access to medical care, like maybe the general population does, it really does matter that you know, maybe our health is being compromised by our air quality, our poor air quality,” said Denise Lopez, a Sioux City resident.
One of these air quality monitors is set up at the Sanford Community Center.
“Some of the trends that we see here at this site are regular spikes above 100 AQI, which is air quality index. And that’s a level that’s unhealthy for people who have preexisting conditions. And then we’ve also seen those 150 AQI spikes that can harm all populations regardless of existing conditions or illness,” said Oster.
Currently, they don’t have many monitors up in the city and are asking for more people to help them out.
“To me, it’s important to feel like I’m making a difference somehow. And this seemed like really a no-brainer for us because we have the electricity access here and internet access, and we have this nice tree, and we thought about other places, too, but the tree just seemed like a good place to put it. We have a nice air flow here,” said Lopez.
“You really have to talk about a problem in order to address it. And I think that what these monitors do. They give a real transparency that can spur action,” said Oster.
For more information about the air quality monitoring and how you can help out, click here.