PGAQ #63 by Vic Steblin, Dec 13, 2008

2570 Laurier Crescent, Prince George, BC, 250-564-1123

The front page Citizen article of Fri Dec 12, 2008 on “Air pollution focus of health study” reports that the air quality of Prince George is being taken seriously by organizations like Northern Health, the Prince George Air Improvement Roundtable (PGAIR), the BC Centre for Disease Control, UNBC and the BC Ministry of Environment. The article encourages additional comment.

A Mobile Monitoring Unit will try to test for fine particulate in neighbourhoods other than the current locations of the BCR, Downtown and College Heights. The unit will also try to test fine particulate from moving sources like trucks and locomotives. Following are some no-brainer musings.

If the weather is mild and there is a decent wind, then any fine particulate will rise up and be wafted away causing low readings of particulate.

If the weather is inversion-producing cold and there is little wind, then the monitor will need to be located near the residential wood burners to notice higher than average particulate.

I predict that the hot spots of particulate will be in those places that have lots of burners. But eventually the whole bowl gets filled from these multiple hot sources making the whole bowl a hot spot. One can see this effect from UNBC.

It should be interesting to see what effect the Christmas shutdown of the pulp mills will have as balanced against more residences burning wood during the break.