Observation: The air has been very smokey, making community member's eyes and sinuses uncomfortable. Beginning Tuesday August 1st the smoke started to make it's way south from BC and other surrounding fires to the Swinomish Reservation and has gotten persistently worse as the week went on.
Air Monitoring in La Conner, Washington
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and Oregon State University (OSU) have an ongoing air quality monitoring project to measure Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs at two sampling sites, one at the Swinomish Casino and one at the Northwest Indian College satellite campus located in the village. The samples shown are from the casino site.
Overview of the Project:
The Hi-Vol sampler is used for the collection of suspended particles and organic contaminants in air. Two quartz fiber filters are used in series to collect PM2.5; that is, atmospheric particulate matter with particles <2.5 µm in diameter. The flow rate used during this sampling event will be ~40 scfm (~1.1 m3 min 1). The first, slotted quartz fiber filter on the single-stage impactor will collect size fractions of 2.5 µm diameter particles and larger. The 8x10” quartz fiber filter on the base plate collects the fine particulate matter below 2.5 µm. The sampler operates for a 24-hour interval that is set via the digital timer. The used quartz fiber filters are removed from the sampler following each sampling period. These samples will be sent to OSU labs to be analyzed for PAH's and then results will be communicated to the Tribe.
This project is being conducted by the tribe's Community Environmental Health Program and Simonich Environmental Chemistry Laboratory Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
LEO Says: According to AIRNow and courtesy of Northwest Clean Air Agency, Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, State of Washington-Department of Ecology-Air Quality Program today's Air Quality Index (AQI) observed at 14:00 PDT 57 Moderate. This is down from observed Particles PM 2.5 85**Moderate and Particles PM 10 **26 Good.
References:
Dhammapala, R., & Washungton Department of Ecology. (2017, August 4). Mild recovery started and paused [Blog post]. Retrieved from Washington Smoke Information website: http://wasmoke.blogspot.com/
Standard Operating Procedure
Air Sampling for 2.5 µm Particulate Matter (PM2.5)
Using a High-Volume Air Sampler
Simonich Environmental Chemistry Laboratory
Oregon State University
AIRNow. (2017). Data and Forecasts [Infographic]. Retrieved from https://airnow.gov/
index.cfm?action=airnow.local_city&cityid=634
