How is your neighbourhood air quality? New Hamilton study will test every ward in the city
A new hyperlocal" air-quality study will install pollution monitors in every ward across Hamilton starting in January.
So if you think a particular neighbourhood deserves a pollution sniff-test, now is your chance to tell the city.
The city's public health department and Environment Hamilton are working with a University of Toronto research team on the one-year study, which will monitor seasonal air quality at 60 different locations in 2022.
Some air samplers will be placed with equity issues and environmental justice" in mind, said Environment Hamilton head Lynda Lukasik - think areas of the city with lower incomes, more recent immigrants or people of colour - to track correlations between vulnerable resident groups and poor air quality.
I'm excited about it, because we've been aiming for so long to try an achieve this sort of hyperlocal, neighbourhood-level monitoring," said Lukasik, whose group has also equipped cyclists with air quality monitors in the past.
There is already a network of industry-funded air monitors in the lower city, but mostly limited to the bayfront.
The province also offers an online air-quality index" for residents based on monitoring stations downtown, on the Mountain and in west Hamilton, but those high-level pollution results don't always reflect the neighbourhood reality.
The passive air monitors will operate for up to a month in each of four seasons, tracking levels of contaminants like benzene, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxides, nitric oxide, sulphur dioxide and ground-level ozone.
You won't be able to track the air quality in real time, but Lukasik said the plan is to try to make the results public in a digestible, accessible" manner.
The study team held a first online meeting about the study for residents this week, but information and feedback forms are available at EnvironmentHamilton.org.
The team is interested in hearing from residents about concerns with air quality in individual neighbourhoods, as well as suggestions about where monitors should be installed.
Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at for The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com