In 2015 the United States (US) Department of State launched an Air Quality Monitoring Program with the primary goals of protecting US personnel and their families, obtaining sound data to reduce exposure, evaluating the Department’s enterprise risk, advancing scientific understanding, and highlighting US technology and leadership. This effort has contributed air quality reporting at many embassies and consulates around the world. Volunteer on-site Air Quality Fellows provide the scientific expertise behind this program. Air Sciences’ Dr. Katheryn Kolesar recently returned from such a trip to Cairo, Egypt.
To track emissions at the national level, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires Oregon (and other states) to conduct statewide inventories from all sources of air pollution. These data collected from across the country are used for making new rules and modeling air pollution.
A few years in the making, Cleaner Air Oregon (CAO) addresses this need and is already affecting many companies in the state. As of November 2018, all permitted facilities should have already submitted emissions inventories for their sources to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
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The state of Oregon has proposed a new set of rules, currently in the draft state, for a risk-based air toxics permitting program; the program is named “Cleaner Air Oregon.” The stated goal of Cleaner Air Oregon is to reduce health risks from existing industrial facilities to below 100 in 1 million by 2030. To accomplish this goal, the state of Oregon will require emissions reductions from facilities for which the aggregate health risk, based on predicted health risk from 260 chemicals with known health-protective levels, is above the 100 in 1 million threshold.
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