Council scientist sets up innovative air quality monitoring project

Benefiting from the clean prevailing winds brought in from the Atlantic, Ireland's air quality compares favourably with our European neighbours.

This has not always been the case, however, as anyone growing up in 1980s Dublin will tell you, with the burning of smoky coal causing extreme smog and a many deaths by the end of the decade.

The situation improved greatly with the 1990 smoky coal ban in Dublin, which took the issue largely off the radar.

Yet, problems remain in numerous towns and cities across Ireland, with action largely constrained by a lack of accurate real-time data, a key tool in influencing policy choices according to the EPA.

National system

Although a national system is not yet in place,

Wexford County Council

is taking a lead, recently setting up real-time monitoring equipment in Wexford Town and New Ross.

The equipment measures the amount of small particles in the air such as emissions from fires, with data updated every 15 minutes to reflect 24-hour and seven day cycles.

“We are still a good bit away and it’s not in the public consciousness yet, but I hope to keep driving it home so people stop [using smoky coal],” says the council’s senior executive scientist, Brendan Cooney.

He set up the project after growing frustrated with more cumbersome measurement tools which often take 30 days to return results. “It was really just for aesthetics, not really for public health,” he says.

Cooney is working to have an air quality function added to MapAlerter, a free mapping service used by local authorities to alert residents to the likes of road closures and flood risks.

Poor air quality

He knows firsthand the potential deadly nature of

poor air quality

for people suffering from the likes of

asthma

after losing a friend to the respiratory illness during his mid-twenties.

“It was the first time that I realised that someone could die from an asthma attack and that was shocking to me,” he says.

“That has always been stuck in my mind, so when I had a chance to do something about it down here, I jumped at it.”

The system will also be installed in Enniscorthy and Gorey by the end of next year with support from the EPA.