‘I can feel it in my lungs’: New state program will improve data collection when air quality worsens

This is the time of year when more people go outside to take advantage of the warm weather.

This is also the time of year when air quality can deteriorate.

How weather and even wildfires in Canada can compromise the quality of the air we breathe here in Massachusetts.

Now the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is deploying new air sensors to get a better read on pollution levels.

“I am holding what we call a purple air sensor. This is a small, softball sized sensor that collects data on particulate matter that’s in the air around us,” explained Commissioner Bonnie Heiple.

500 of these portable devices are getting deployed across Massachusetts to create a more detailed picture of air quality. Particularly how it varies from one community to the next.

“It can help people with asthma, with existing respiratory illnesses, to be extra prepared that day, to bring an inhaler,” Heiple said. “It helps residents in those ways, but it helps us regulators decide what we’re going to require from things like power plants in the future to limit harmful emissions.”

In Boston, one woman told us that she has asthma, and she can tell when the air quality is declining. “I can feel it in my lungs.”

A man told Boston 25 News he must start each day with an over-the-counter allergy pill. “In 20-30 years down the line, when I am 50-60 years old, how is this going to manifest in my long-term health?”

These new sensors will compliment the 24 monitoring states spread across the state.

Heiple said many of the new sensors will be placed in environmental justice communities.

“Communities that have a language proficiency and minority populations because the data shows that the air quality is typically worse in those areas.”

Dr. Renee Crichlow, Chief Medical Officer at the Codman Square Health Center, believes it makes sense to put the sensors in the areas where health is compromised by bad air.

She says residents of those communities are “more likely have lower birth weight and premature babies, more likely to have asthma that is poorly controlled, more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that’s poorly controlled and we have decreased longevity.”

Heiple hopes a new wave of technology can make a big improvement in quality-of-life issues for everyone.

“It’s foundational, right? It’s fundamental to all of us that the air that you breathe, the air that your elderly parent may breathe, your child may breathe, that you know and have confidence that it is not harmfully affecting your health is a basic human right at this point.”

That state also has plans to try out some multi-pollutant sensors and diesel sensors in certain areas.

The state’s data on air quality is available here.

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