Gabriola Island Clean Air Society

During the Summer of 2017 the interior of British Columbia experienced an unprecedented forest fire season with wood smoke bathing much of the province in particulate pollution. In Kamloops and elsewhere, community groups and individuals have been setting up low-cost air quality sensors made by companies like PurpleAir and more recently SensorUp . How do these sensors compare to government air quality monitors which often cost hundreds of times more? Below is an overview comparing three of several PurpleAir sensors in Kamloops to the government monitor located on the Kamloops Federal Building with respect to PM2.5 levels during the months of July and August 2017. For comparison purposes, two PurpleAir sensors are within 1km of the Kamloops Federal Building. Here's what the government monitor yielded during this timeframe based on a one hour averaging period. Below is the same averaging period for the PurpleAir sensors located on Lorne Street and Strathcona Terrace...

Today the following two screenshots of air quality on Gabriola Island (Berry Point Road) sensor and Thetis Island show dramatically the impacts of wood stoves on air quality. Both sets of data were captured at 7PM on April 5, 2018. Thetis Island has a population of 350. It has no industry, minimal traffic and the centre of the island is 13.5 km from the Crofton Pulp and Paper Mill.  Thetis is almost due north at 174 degrees from the mill. At this time, the air quality at the sensor's location is excellent and consistently low over various averaging periods. You should note that the bottom line in the graph is flat indicating no significant sources of wood smoke or other particulate pollution. By contrast, Gabriola Island has a population of 4000 with many households that use wood for home heating. Like with Thetis Island, there is no industry and minimal vehicular traffic on Gabriola. The distance from the sensor on Berry Point Road to the Harmac Pulp and Paper Mill in Nan...

This evening one of our sensors on Gabriola Island began picking up rapidly increasing levels of wood smoke in the Berry Point Road area. These levels are more than 10 times the World Health Organisation's limits and represent a real and immediate threat.

To read the article click here .

Here's a clear picture of how hyperlocal the pollution from wood stove use can be. This is near Duncan BC on Vancouver Island. Note the differences from sensors nearby and the see-saw pattern that reflects perfectly the nature of wood burning. It is also clearly an indoor appliance given the cycling with stoking/reloading the fire.

Here we go again Kamloops. Wood smoke pollution is starting to build rapidly yet government sensors are slow off the mark once again. Our community and all communities deserve real-time and not averaged and lagged indicators for air pollution. The government hates these low-cost devices because they erode their control over access to information and individuals/alternative interpretations of risk.

Here's what happens when one very dirty diesel delivery truck drives past a PurpleAir sensor. Note the spike and relatively higher level of PM2.5 compared to other sensors in the area. The increase in pollution is still a fraction of what wood burning stoves and fireplaces generate, and the diesel pollution dropped in a few minutes. We still need to work on replacing such polluters since air quality is the biggest environmental health risk of our times. Air pollution is also the main and likely only driver of climate change.