NWI Times
Air pollution comes in many forms, from visible smog to invisible microparticles. Some of the tiniest toxins floating in our air can have the most dangerous impacts on public health. The Midwest is full of many sources of air contamination, including power plants, idling motor vehicles, construction sites, airplanes, wood-burning fires, and more. According to the American Lung Association, Chicago has the 17th & 22nd worst air pollution among American cities for ozone and particulate matter.
Our team is focused on Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) a category of tiny air pollutants that are small enough to bypass the body’s natural defenses, enter the blood stream and become lodged in the throat and lungs. They are about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Exposure to PM2.5 can affect everyone, over both short and long periods of time. Children and the elderly, especially those with asthma and other chronic respiratory illnesses, are particularly vulnerable to the negative health effects caused by air pollution.
Our team spent years systematically collecting air data in Chicago to understand particulate matter pollution and identify solutions. Using handheld monitors on foot or by bike, our street-by-street approach allowed us to build a granular air quality database with over 12 million PM2.5 data points. Mobile monitoring gave us the unique opportunity to involve local residents in the data collection process. In 2019, we held a community monitoring event in McKinley Park with the National Latino Education Institute and Neighbors For Environmental Justice.
We continue to work with community partners, focused on south and west side environmental justice communities with high rates of respiratory illnesses. We work to pinpoint times and places with consistently elevated levels, to better advocate for clean air policies that improve public health.
ELPC partnered with Microsoft Research’s Urban Innovation team, Array of Things, City Tech Collaborative, JCDecaux, and the City of Chicago to deploy a network of stationary air quality sensors on 100 bus shelters throughout Chicago. Project Eclipse helped illustrate citywide air quality and particulate matter patterns over time, complementing ELPC’s mobile air monitoring program. This project was retired in 2022, but the City of Chicago has promised to establish a citywide stationary monitoring network of its own. A publicly owned network with real-time data would be incredibly valuable for public health and advocacy. ELPC will continue to hold them accountable to that promise.
As part of our Northwest Indiana Protector Project, ELPC has installed a set of stationary PurpleAir monitors on private homes. So far, the results have shown higher particulate matter overnight, so ELPC is looking into regional and specific local conditions that might contribute to this finding. ELPC works with local community organizations to monitor industrial facilities in the area, including steel mills, hazardous waste sites, and oil refineries to call for tighter permits and stronger enforcement.
A great turnout for our air quality community monitoring event in McKinley Park.
ELPC is working on many fronts to clean up air pollution across the Midwest. We make sure dirty industries clean up or shut down, like the Fisk & Crawford coal plants in Chicago that shuttered in 2010. We fight for strong federal and state regulations to protect our air. And we propose solutions for cleaner transportation, like electric school buses, which are now rolling out across the Midwest thanks to ELPC advocacy.
ELPC is working with the U.S. EPA and the Morton Arboretum to identify Chicago schools facing high traffic pollution exposure that could be good candidates for nature-based remediation. Our children are especially vulnerable to poor air quality, because they breathe 50% more air per pound of bodyweight than adults and their lungs are still developing. Vegetative buffers offer a potential solution, providing a dense planting of trees, bushes, and other plants to physically block pollution in the air, filter particles, and other health benefits. We will incorporate air monitoring to advance scientific research on vegetative buffers, and develop curricula to engage students throughout the process.