It's Official, the Pacific is "Lost" - Do you still eat ocean products? ( Archived) (112)

That is a very good question. It should have been completed by now if other new air quality initiatives had not interrupted regular automated air quality monitoring work covering the criteria pollutants in the continental U.S.A.

Following 911, USEPA was order by homeland security to sample for unmentionable toxic airborne fugitive particale pollutants in areas where no one ever determined what the natural background levels are for them. Then, for the first time, u.s.epa was ordered to monitor (or contract with state and local air monitoring agencies) for gases that represent no harm to health at ground level, but indirectly cause health problems later but in the upper atmosphere: greenhouse gases.

Specific and inexpensive automated radiation monitoring techniques haven't existed for most radionuclides on a near real-time basis, excepting radon instrumentation. The telemetry for radionuclides is already in place. Air quality monitoring operations and the quality assurance of it have been very expensive. Radiation monitoring on a national level will not be any different.

I'd like to know the answer to this question, too. I imagine, though, that U.S. EPA will require its own guidelines for any ambient air monitoring data to be reported to the national air data base and considered useful.

From the very origins of ambient air quality monitoring in the USA, all ambient air quality monitoring instrumentation had to be tested and approved by U.S. EPA, at their labs in Research Triangle Park, Raleigh N.C. and given a designated reference or equivalency number before any data would be acceptable for entry into the national air data base.

Having these approval numbers alone, still doesn't guarantee that the air quality data from these instruments will be automatically considered good, valid and usedul. The air quality data owners need to first demonstrate to U.S. EPA that the instrumentation was also sited, calibrated, operated and quality assured properly for thermos which data are reported.

I have worked on more than a few public awareness programs providing air quality data to the public in useful ways by various media. Sometimes I wish it were smart to disclose our names on CS. Googling my name and EPA would return some interesting results (imo). It is good to see your interest in similar ambient air quality information.

If you can't trust the information or the source of information to any degree to be valid and you do or don't trust the messenger, then you are wasting your time. The whole show lacks integrity.

oh, that sounds like healthy and too much fun!