Youth Developed and Run Air Monitoring

In partnership with the Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA) and supported by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) and Seattle City Light, our team at TD Enviro embarked on an air quality monitoring program in the Duwamish River Valley Area, led by a dedicated team of youth scientists. This project combined air quality education, youth engagement, air quality monitoring, and data analysis, with the goal of having DVSA’s air quality youth team develop their own monitoring network that met local needs and run air monitors for three months. 

The DVSA youth team learns about air quality!

Starting with a day-long air quality foundations training, our team then worked with the DVSA youth over two months to identify local air quality concerns, determine their monitoring objectives, decide if the technology they were using should be fixed or mobile/handheld, determine their routes and siting locations, and assign roles and responsibilities to their team. The youth decided to regularly walk six handheld/mobile PM_2.5 sensor routes and operate two stationary black carbon monitors in the South Park neighborhood in Seattle. One was located at the Duwamish River Community Hub (a high traffic area) and one at a home in a residential neighborhood. They aimed to map out where air quality is better and worse across the region, designing handheld routes that took them near a variety of sources (major roadways, industrial sources, an airfield), and past areas of concern, like schools, a community garden, and hospitals.

The youth plan their handheld PM2.5 monitor walking routes.

Once plans were in place, the youth spent the summer walking their PM_2.5 handheld routes, compiling black carbon data, learning about air quality data analysis, and getting a tour of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency regulatory monitoring in their neighborhood.

Come fall, the youth team finished monitoring and began analysis on the PM_2.5 data, identifying hotspots in their neighborhood and presenting their findings to the community. The TD Enviro team helped analyze the black carbon data and compared it to local regulatory monitoring sites, working with the youth team to understand trends in the data and apply their knowledge of the local area. Findings showed higher black carbon at the Community Hub than in the neighborhood, but both were lower than at the two regulatory sites.

Working with DVSA and their youth team was a fantastic experience! Looking for help designing and developing your air monitoring project or offering air quality education to your community? Let us know!