Gabriola Island Clean Air Society

The Gabriola Island Clean Air Society is building Canada's first distributed, low-cost, air quality monitoring network using citizen scientists. This technology comes from PurpleAir and it will help achieve the following objectives on our island. First, there is no air quality monitoring done on Gabriola Island on a regular basis. This equipment provides real-time, 24 hour data. Second, the network of monitors may help provide early warning to our fire department and other emergency responders regarding fire threats. Think of it like having smoke detectors in your home but in this case in your community. Third, a new proposal to create five anchorages for large ships off the shores of the island means that this network will provide baseline data on existing air quality plus track any changes resulting from ship activity. Fourth, the network will also allow us to understand more fully the relative contribution of off-island point sources of air pollution including an active pulp and...

Highly recommended video on the risk of wood smoke exposure from Dr. Brian Moench, M.D.

In January of 2015, Shaw TV in Nanaimo produced the following show about wood smoke pollution on Gabriola Island. It features two of Gabriola Island Clean Air Society founders: David Boehm and Michael Mehta.

An interesting new company has been formed to market wearable environmental monitors. Check out the following video.

A new non-profit has been started called the Gabriola Island Clean Air Society .

In August 2015 we decided to test the PM 2.5 levels from a 2013 Ford Explorer with a V8 engine. The nephelometer (Radiance Research M90 )  was positioned 15cm away from the exhaust pipe on a calm day. After several minutes of readings on a warmed up engine, the PM 2.5 levels ranged between 8 and 11 with a modal response of approximately 8.5. Here's a photo of the experiment. This shows us how clean vehicles emissions are when compared to woodsmoke fires.   Paradoxically you would be safer (at least from a PM 2.5 perspective) breathing off this tailpipe like a snorkel than  living near a wood fire like this where readings have sometimes hit 200 (ten times the provincial limit).

Dave Neads found this article with this chart at the end. Dave's comments are below the picture. You can compare different fuels to see whether you're paying too much  for your particular situation. http://umaine.edu/publications/7216e/ The important part of this paper is the chart at the end. It shows the relative cost for different fuels based on BTU delivered. Pay attention to the different assumptions, not every wood stove is equal, not every type of fuel is equal. The heat delivered by each scenario is relatively fixed, the ratios between each source don't change. Your scenario may or my not match one of these scenarios. When you compare electric kW to wood, paying 10 cents per kWh is the same as paying $290 a cord  (Pine and fir)  if you use a 70% efficient heater.  Rarely  does a heater put out 70%, most air tights are in the 50% or less range. In that case you should pay less per cord because you'll need more so the price of wood th...