Ulster County and Bard College have installed 17 street-level air quality monitors at libraries, town halls, and other community hubs, creating a countywide network intended to give residents more localized information about the air they breathe.
Most air quality measurements come from rooftop EPA monitors in densely populated areas. The project seeks to fill gaps left by traditional monitoring networks, which can leave rural areas without neighborhood-level readings. Until now, Ulster County lacked its own broad network of localized monitors, relying instead on regional data, including measurements from Albany and Newburgh.
“It’s really powerful information for people to have,” said Lorraine Farina, founder of the Hudson Valley Air Quality Coalition, a Kingston-based nonprofit that worked with Bard College on Kingston’s first air quality report.
The monitors stem from a partnership between Ulster County and the Community Science Lab at Bard’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities to expand Bard’s Hudson Valley Community Air Network throughout the county.
The broader network, including Ulster County, now receives data from 53 monitors across the Hudson Valley region. Of those, 31 have been installed outdoors at eye level at libraries, town halls, and community centers, providing information specific to their locations. Twenty-two, including the monitors in Ulster County, feed data to JustAir, which displays real-time community air monitoring data and sends alerts when air quality worsens.
“Hyperlocal monitoring is critical because neighborhoods can vary wildly within a community,” Farina said. “One block may have fairly pristine air quality and two blocks over, people are really suffering.”
Waste management centers, incinerators, and residential wood burning can affect local air quality without always being detected by regional sensors, potentially leaving lawmakers without localized information when seeking to cut emissions or decide where to build infrastructure such as schools.
Residents can now collect data from libraries in Woodstock, Olive, Hurley, Phoenicia, and Saugerties, as well as the Pine Hill Community Center and Denning Town Hall.
The monitors measure fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, particles 2.5 micrometers or smaller in diameter. Because the particles can penetrate deep into the lungs, exposure is associated with serious health risks, said Elias Dueker, director of Bard’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities.
“It’s that particulate matter is really dangerous,” Dueker said. “Those are the kinds of particles that can get deepest into our lungs and can cause all sorts of health problems,” he said.
PM2.5 can cause irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, and premature death in people with lung disease.
Particulate matter of this size is produced by burning gasoline, oil, diesel fuel, and wood. Wildfires and traffic congestion also release large amounts of it.
Dueker said street-level sensors can provide a closer look at what people are breathing in particular locations, especially where rooftop or more distant monitors may not capture local variations.
“The closer to the ground you are, the higher the concentration of those particles,” Dueker said. “Street-level measurements then allow us to get more of a sense of what folks are breathing based on where they are in a community.”
Proximity to a pollution source and an area’s local micrometeorology can also change air quality from location to location, Dueker said.
“Street-level sensors are really kind of the ones that are going to be most useful for people’s everyday health, so we’re really excited to be able to expand that network,” he said.
The local monitors allow residents to make more health-conscious decisions, said Melissa McHugh, library director at the Olive Free Library Association.
“In general, people just have been really excited about it,” she said. “It’s going to be great for parents to be able just to see what the air quality is for their kids, especially if they have asthma or some other kind of breathing difficulty during the summertime.”
Kyle Bredberg is an intern and contributing reporter. You can reach him at reporting@theoverlooknews.com.
