All those fireworks keeping us up late last night have also had a lingering effect on our air quality, and it happens every year.
Real-time monitoring from the Department of Environmental Quality currently showed unhealthy air at its sensor in Meridian early Wednesday. There are moderate conditions in Nampa and Garden City, but good air quality on Wednesday morning at sensors in Twin Falls, Ketchum and Burley.
Read the full transcript with Mike Toole, the regional airshed manager with the Department of Environmental Quality:
TOOLE: Good morning, Troy. Happy to be here.
TROY OPPIE: And a quick note before we begin. Idaho DEQ is a financial supporter of Boise State Public Radio News. Mike, let's first get a quick baseline. What does DEQ monitor for with air quality and where are your monitoring stations?
TOOLE: Sure. So we have them statewide. What we do is we monitor for air quality pollutants the six criteria pollutants which are defined in the Clean Air Act. Those include things like particulate matter, ground level ozone, carbon monoxide. The two primary ones we are concerned with are the ground level ozone and the particulate matter, which generally are like dust, smoke, wildfire smoke, things of that nature. We have monitors spread out through the entire state here locally in the southwest region, throughout the Treasure Valley, in Meridian, Boise, Nampa and outlying areas such as McCall, Idaho City and Garden Valley. So we have a pretty good network and web of monitors throughout the state to give us an idea of what's going on in real time.
OPPIE: So describe what you've seen in real time at those stations over the past 24 hours or so as we've experienced another 4th of July holiday.
TOOLE: Yeah. So it's always an interesting time of the year with, you know, the potential for wildfire smoke. And then we have the 4th of July come around. But interestingly enough, this year, especially for our region here in Boise, everything was in the green. Everything was looking really good. And then, you know, about approximately 9:10 p.m. last night, we saw the numbers really jump up. We went from the green up into that red, unhealthy and even had a couple hours in the very unhealthy which, you know, with the time of year and with the fireworks is completely expected. We weren't caught off guard by anything. But it is interesting. We do have significantly high levels late at night and overnight through the early morning hours. But what we're seeing right now is things are starting to level off and we anticipate levels getting back to normal, which would be the good yellow for this time of year. So there's always that really high spike and it's always kind of a guessing game of how high it will go. And last night it did jump pretty good with all the celebration.
OPPIE: You mentioned that you're measuring particulates in the air. What about the makeup of fireworks particulate is unique or maybe different than what we might experience with wildfire smoke?
TOOLE: So that's a great question. So the constituents involved in the type of smoke can differ greatly. So again, with wildfire smoke, it's going to depend on where the fire is and what type of vegetation is burning. Is it sagebrush, wildland fire? Is it trees, you know, more of a forest fire. And those can give off different specific chemical constituents. With the fireworks, it's going to be a lot different than wildfire smoke. Now, the monitors that we have typically just give us a baseline kind of a broad view of what that particulate number is. There is the ability to speciate, which means to break that down into the specific constituents, whether it be certain metal compounds, certain vegetation, things of that nature, and that analysis can be done. But generally for the public health aspect, we just want to look at the big overall number because that will give us the best idea on things that may impact people's health and help us give recommendations to people on what they can do to mitigate that problem.
OPPIE: Are there other kind of single-day, one-off events that compare to the outsized impact that the 4th of July can have on our air quality?
TOOLE: You know, looking throughout the year, there may be, you know, New Years, occasionally we'll see the numbers go up, but nothing like the 4th of July. The 4th of July is that one time of year where we anticipate significantly high numbers and more often than not, it comes through. So that is really the only day outside of inversions and wildfire smoke where we can have pretty significant numbers, where we anticipate seeing really high numbers typically over a short term period. It usually does not linger very long. So it's a pretty big bump. Roller coaster goes up real high and shoots down real low again pretty quick.
OPPIE: And as you mentioned a minute ago, we seem to be beyond the worst of that impact from all the fireworks on the 4th of July last night. Mike Toole is a Regional Airshed Manager with the Department of Environmental Quality, talking air quality with us this morning. Thanks for your time, Mike. I Appreciate it.
TOOLE: Thanks, Troy.
