Utilizing Portable Air Quality Monitors to Asses the Significance of Air Pollution along the Northern Front Range

Abstract:

High levels of ozone in the troposphere are recognized to produce a myriad of harmful effects on human health. Due to a significant interest in the quality of air along the Front Range in Colorado, the Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Éxperiment (FRAPPÉ) launched an ongoing field campaign utilizing both ground and air instruments to monitor air pollution. This study contributes to the FRAPPÉ campaign by using newly developed portable air quality monitors (M-Pods) in conjunction with stationary ground instruments to monitor air quality. The M-Pods were calibrated co-location style: they were placed near a regulatory monitor at the CAMP site in Denver to record data. A calibration curve was then created using the data from the regulatory monitors as a standard. For this study, four M-Pods were distributed to hikers and deployed twice a week over a period of four weeks. Deployment locations varied to account for a greater extent of the Front Range.This study used spatial monitoring to record the fluctuations of air quality along the Front Range with both time and elevation. Future studies can use this data to further explore trends of air pollution along mountain ranges worldwide.