Air monitoring grant for St. Louis area
September 24, 2009
Jefferson City, MO
Gov. Jay Nixon announced the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has awarded St. Louis City’s Air Pollution Control Program with a $17,740 subgrant. During tough economic times, this infusion of grant funding will help St. Louis protect its citizens and the environment by performing air quality monitoring.
St. Louis City staff will use the grant to continue oversight of the sampling of toxic metals, volatile organics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at the Blair Street monitoring site for fiscal year 2010. This continued monitoring will allow the city to collect more robust data in an attempt to better understand the behavior and variability of air toxics.
This site is one of the 23 sites that are collecting this data nationwide. Measurements of key toxic air pollutants in representative areas of the nation are needed to provide a basic measure of air quality differences across cities and regions over time. Trend measurements provide one basis for accounting for progress in dealing with air toxics. Ambient emission measurements may also serve as a surrogate for actual human exposure which in turn is used for exposure assessments and development of emission control strategies.
The project is a continuation of the Community Air Project in St. Louis. The sampling will be conducted every sixth day on the national sampling schedule. Overall project planning, field measurement and data analysis will be conducted by the department with St. Louis City staff overseeing the monitoring station.
The Department is committed to working closely with communities to assist with funding efforts that support air quality monitoring projects as well as provide a financial savings.
From the Department of Natural Resources.
Copyright 2009 Neighbors About Town
