Southwestern Pennsylvania has vigilant allies when it comes to monitoring the air quality of our region.
CMU’s Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS) drives two programs that assist us in understanding how air pollution circulates through the city and neighborhoods.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has vigilant allies when it comes to monitoring the air quality of our region.
CMU’s Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS) drives two programs that assist us in understanding how air pollution circulates through the city and neighborhoods. One program, funded through EPA’s Air Pollution Monitoring for Communities, is one of six such projects in the country. The other is funded by The Heinz Endowments.
What makes these monitoring programs unique is their contribution to our overall understanding of air pollution. The Breathemobile is packed with scientific instrumentation that provides real-time analysis of local air quality in Allegheny County and beyond. They produce insights into how pollution travels from point sources and through neighborhoods.
RAMPs, short for Real-time, Affordable, Multi-Pollutant, give the region an inexpensive and flexible way to measure EPA monitored pollutants on a wide geographic scale. This scale is more geographically dispersed than the monitoring system operated by the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD).
RAMPs measure criteria air pollutan