You are here:
THE PASSIVE OZONE NETWORK IN DALLAS (POND CONCEPT) - A MODELING OPPORTUNITY WITH COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Citation:
Varns, J, J D. Mulik, M. E. Sather, M. Lister, G. Glenn, L. Smith, D. D. Williams, E A. Betz, AND A P. Hines. THE PASSIVE OZONE NETWORK IN DALLAS (POND CONCEPT) - A MODELING OPPORTUNITY WITH COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT. Presented at Annual Air Pollution Workshop, Corvallis, OR, April 26-29, 1999.
Description:
Despite tremendous efforts towards regulating and controlling tropospheric ozone (O3) formation, over 70 million people currently live in U.S. counties which exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) set for 03. These high 03 concentrations alone cost the U.S. approximately $5 billion annually in reduced crop yields and excessive human health costs. The attention upon urban 03 abatement, a focus of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, does not encompass the broad scale management for this pollutant -03 pollution is fundamentally a regional scale phenomenon. Regional airshed models will persist as incomplete aids to state implementation plans (SIPS) until the influence of the rural - urban 03 transport is incorporated into them, i.e., over half the content in urban plumes exceeding NAAQS is thought to be transported from rural surroundings.
A public networking of sites using a simplified passive sampling device (PSD) for ozone could provide a longer term, highly resolved data base of regional scale 03 measurements to the modeler, a scenario that is not currently plausible with real-rime monitoring because of economic and operator constraints. In conjunction/collaboration with EPA Region 6, a lay network of 30 PSD sites (acronym POND, Le., Passive Ozone Network of Dallas) in and surrounding the Dallas-Ft.Worth area, a region bounded by 16 counties, successfully measured daily ozone on 24 and 96 hr schedules during eight weeks of the high ozone season (July 13 through September 4, 1998). Site operators included volunteers from Region 6 personnel, service organizations such as the 4-H Club and Master Gardeners as well as farm retirees selected by county extension agents. The data from 2880 measurements clearly indicate that a concerned public, when properly trained, can successfully operate a large PSD network that requires daily sample handling and weekly mailing procedures. PSD values from four collocated real-time monitoring sites yielded excellent correlations during the eight week period (r2 range = 0.90 to 0.97 ). An EPA video was developed for the generic training of the laysite operators (EPA/600-V-98/001).
This abstract has been reviewed in accordance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's peer and administrative review policies and approved for presentation and publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.