Air Quality Monitoring
Pictured: CSAW Fellows with an AQ Sync.
Project Description
The Air Quality Monitoring Project works in partnership with higher education institutions like Emory University and community-based organizations like CHARRS to install air monitoring equipment, collect air quality data, share data and train residents in communities around metro-Atlanta such that community members can advance their advocacy efforts to address longstanding air quality problems. This project empowers communities to identify the type and extent of air quality issues they are confronting, increase community awareness of the risks associated with air pollutants in their communities, and increases access to information and tools that will help community members decrease the impacts of these pollutants on the environment and on their health.
Metro-Atlanta Clean Air Initiative (MACAI)
MACAI will deploy seven air quality monitors (three furnished using EPA funds) in communities to collect data over a one-year period; making near real-time air quality data available for the communities and other stakeholders; providing eight to ten training sessions to a minimum of 75 people and working with five communities (Lithonia, Pittsburgh, Peoplestown, Chapel Hill, and South Fulton) to develop specific strategies to reduce the effects of air pollutants on their health. The long-term outcome is to reduce human exposure to the identified pollutants.
AQ Earth
In Atlanta, Georgia, the AQEarth team includes Community Health Aligning Revitalization Resilience & Sustainability (CHARRS) and West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA), two organizations working on environmental justice and public health issues in the region. The project consists of air monitoring and providing community education, collectively aiming to bring community members together around air quality issues in West Atlanta neighborhoods.