October 15, 2020

Air Quality Monitoring Report Hyde Park

ELPC works with community partners MAPSCorps and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club (HPNC) in Hyde Park to collect particulate matter data in the summer.

Air pollution is a serious threat to the residents of Chicago, but pollution levels can vary by neighborhood and even block-to-block. To understand airborne particulate matter pollution at the local level, ELPC and community partners are conducting an air quality monitoring program to better understand neighborhood particulate matter concentrations.

The data in this report was collected in the Hyde Park community on the city’s South Side from 2017-2019. ELPC worked with MAPSCorps is a Southside-based organization that trains youth to produce high-quality data about community assets, and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club (HPNC), a childcare facility that offers productive and educational activities for Southside youth.

Each year fifteen teens participated in the monitoring program. Those teens were divided into three groups; each group was given an AirBeam monitor to collect data while asset mapping and answering research questions about their communities. Groups walked down sidewalks on most residential and commercial corridors from East Hyde Park Boulevard to 60th Street, between Cottage Grove and Promontory Point,