November 28, 2012-by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor
For those who were breathing overnight, I hope you were able to survive. I had noticed that the air quality was poor this morning but did not immediately address the issue since my complaints in the last week have gone essentially unnoticed by the media, officials or the health community.
I just talked to friend who told me he had gone through a whole roll of toilet tissue because of coughing up “green shit.”
While we were talking, I looked up the air quality data from the Indiana Dept. of Environmental Management near real time data website. It showed we had a serious event that actually started last night and went through 10 AM today. Of course there were no “alerts” issued by either IDEM or the local EPA which should come as no surprise since they do not seem to care about the health of Evansville citizens.
The 24 hour standard for fine particles, PM 2.5 on the chart is 35µg/m3. As you can see from the data below, the Evansville monitor, located on Buena Vista Road near First Ave. showed levels well in excess of that level for many hours overnight, reaching a peak of 50.10µg/m3 during the 6 AM hour.
I would suggest that everyone call the Evansville Mayor’s office and tell him you are fed up with our so called Environmental Protection Agency that is so dismissive of air quality problems we experience around here. At a minimum, they should let people know when the air is approaching the health based standard that is listed as “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” (Sensitive Groups are kids, the elderly, and anyone with any sort of respiratory problem like asthma.) The Civic Center switchboard number is 812 435 5000.
At the top is a screen shot of the data as shown at:
http://leads.idem.in.gov/cgi-bin/idem/daily_summary.pl