GREENFIELD — The Healthy Air Network, a collaborative air-quality monitoring network led by the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, welcomed community members to the Greenfield Public Library on Tuesday to learn more about how air quality is measured and what actions can be taken to improve it.
Sarita Hudson, senior director of strategy and development at the Healthy Air Network, said air quality can vary from one day to the next, from season to season, geographically, and even throughout a single day.
To monitor air quality, there are a number of tools, such as popular apps offered by The Weather Channel, AccuWeather or Apple’s own weather app, which offer air quality index (AQI) data. The Healthy Air Network, with the help of the Yale School of Public Health, maintains a website and app that people can use to check air quality conditions and receive alerts when the quality is not ideal for outdoor activity.
“The Healthy Air Network maintains a network of air quality sensors throughout the region,” Hudson said. “Every one of those dots corresponds to a sensor that’s at a home or school or business, and it shows you what the air quality is at that location.”
Hudson said the monitors measure particles in the air, pollen, precipitation, temperature and other factors that can impact air quality.
“This is more for people who have asthma or heart disease, or older folks who might be more sensitive to air quality issues,” Hudson said.
Referring to a map of the air sensor data on Tuesday afternoon, Hudson said the air quality in Greenfield at that moment was OK, but not as good as the air quality out in the hilltowns, potentially due to the number of people and vehicles that travel to Greenfield each day for work.
“One of the things that we found about our air quality is it’s really impacted by transportation. It’s one of the top greenhouse gas emissions that we see in the state,” Hudson said. “Transportation corridors are one of the main issues for air quality. … We’re advocating for people to use public transit rather than individual cars.”
The air quality index includes six color-coded categories, each corresponding to a range of index values ranging from zero to more than 300.
“I always describe it as like a stoplight. Green is good. Green means going outside is no problem,” said Chrissy Larson, an environmental educator with the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst. “When it gets to yellow, it’s starting to become a little more unhealthy, but it’s just a moderate range, and then when it gets to orange and red, that’s when you start getting into the unhealthy [range] for certain groups, and that deeper red or purple, that’s just hazardous.”
Larson showcased a model room made out of a glass box with an air censor and a candle inside. When the candle was lit and the model room was full of smoke, the censor shot up to more than 1,000 AQI and turned red. After the candle was blown out, Larson put a filter in the box and turned on a fan to circulate clean air into the box. Over the course of just a few minutes, the AQI dropped back under 100 and returned to green.
Larson said people can improve air quality in their homes by installing air filters, even simple ones made of the industrial pleated air filters that are typically placed into air conditioners or furnaces, and taping them to the back of a box fan.
Hudson said people can also improve air quality in the environment around them by reducing their carbon footprint or supporting community cleanup efforts.
Peg Hall with Greening Greenfield said that any effort to improve the climate inevitably helps improve air quality, and that Greening Greenfield does work in all sorts of categories under the green umbrella. She said this has included working with the high school to reboot a composting program, working with the Tree Committee to plant trees and supporting other projects throughout the city to promote pollinator-friendly planting, biodiversity, housing and the reduction of fossil fuels.
“We work on anything related to sustainability, and all topics come back to the other topics,” Hall said. “It’s like that old saying, pull one thread and they connect to everything in the universe.”
She echoed Hudson’s statement on transportation having a large impact on air quality. In addition to encouraging people to use public transportation, Hall said making communities walkable is something that can improve air quality, as well as increasing the number of trees and other plants that can naturally filter the air.
“We work with the Tree Committee, and all of our pollinitor projects will be improving air quality as well by trying to draw carbon out of the air and get it into the ground and into the soil,” Hall said.
A few upcoming tree planting days that Greening Greenfield has scheduled are on April 16, April 30 and June 6 at the Millers Meadow.
