City of Dallas installs new air quality monitors in neighborhoods
City of Dallas and The Nature Conservancy in Texas, together with Texas A&M Transportation Institute began installing neighborhood air quality monitors in nine different Dallas neighborhoods as part of the Breathe Easy Dallas project this week.
“We are so excited to finally get this equipment into the neighborhoods,” said Susan Alvarez, assistant director of Environmental Compliance & Sustainability. “This project will give us better insight on neighborhood-level air quality, while also advancing the state of the science related to this equipment. These instruments have been calibrated to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)-monitors that are used to determine overall air quality in Dallas. It will be interesting to see how well these instruments work, and how we can best use the data from these sensors to improve public health. We are grateful to our partners who are working with us on this important effort.”
Breathe Easy Dallas, which started in 2017, is a collaboration with Texas A&M University Transportation Institute (TTI) Center for Advanced Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy and Health (CARTEEH), the City, and The Nature Conservancy in Texas and other health and community organizations to advance scientific understanding and application of local air monitoring for improved public health outcomes among high-risk populations.
“In deploying these air monitors in the field, we embark on a critical, one-year study that will provide us with the data necessary to better understand the role that local air quality plays in relation to pediatric asthma,” said Dallas Healthy Cities Program Director at The Nature Conservancy in Texas Kathy Jack. “The collected data will be shared with local health and community stakeholders to advance additional, parallel research efforts and inform future air quality related health interventions.”
The nine neighborhood locations were selected through review of current Safe-Route-to-School program areas, along with available public health data relative to prevalence of childhood asthma, and racial and economic demographics. A map of current monitoring sites is below.
Breathe Easy Dallas is made possible by Lyda Hill Philanthropies, the Climate Works Foundation, and the Hoblitzelle Foundation.