Last week a friend informed me that much of Minnesota was under an Air Quality Alert. Warm air a mile up was trapping pollutants near ground level. Most of the pollution was from cars and wood-burning stoves. St. Cloud was the worst for poor air quality followed by Duluth and the Twin Cities. Those three areas were in the orange zone meaning people with lung problems should stay inside. Moorhead, Rochester and Brainerd were in the yellow zone. People in those cities could smell that there was something in the air. Roseau County was in the bottom of the yellow zone. I didn't notice anything.
It surprised me to hear our pristine air could be less than perfect. But there are factories in Roseau County and lots of trucks to serve the factories, and lots of people here burn wood. I burn wood in our Shêdeau (guesthouse) and feel mildly guilty for contributing to global warming.
I had just been reading an article by a professor in Edinburg, Scotland writing about his wood stove and about air pollution in Scotland. People in Edinburg are allowed to burn wood as long as the wood has less than 20% moisture. They also have to use efficient stoves; no open fireplaces. More people in Europe are burning wood this winter due to high gas prices resulting from the war in Ukraine. I always imagined Europe as all built up, but apparently there's plenty of firewood available.
Particulate matter under 2.5 microns (a human hair is 75-100 microns) is what causes problems in the human body. Stroke, cardiac problems, lung disease, cancer, etc. are tied to particulate matter in the air. In Great Britain you can put your postal code into a government website and get the PM 2.5 reading for your area.
We in the US can go to http://airnow.gov/ to get a reading on the Air Quality Index. When I put in Wannaska I discovered the nearest Air Quality Index station is in Red Lake 60 miles southeast of Wannaska. The reading there today was 22. Anything under 50 puts you in the green zone. On the map today all of northwest and western Minnesota was white (green) while the rest of the state was yellow.
I don't know how many of our commissioners are reading this, but Roseau County needs its own PM 2.5 monitoring station, and I need a catalytic converter for my wood stove. As for the recent warm air inversion causing our bad air, it was soon swept away by cool winds from the north. This isn't New Delhi after all.
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| God's Country |
Most interesting - catalytic converter for my wood stove - really? Where can we get one? Or am I falling for a Chairman-tease once more? You are right about our "pristine" air. You'd thought it was anything but? For my two breaths, and if my lungs are any indicator, we're doing just fine.
ReplyDeleteMy wife follows this stuff religiously, often reporting it back to me if the warnings are high; one of our sons said there are color-coded warnings along his commute route that may be red one day, yellow the next, etc. Never heard of such a thing! But then I'm old and largely skeptical of such new phenomenon, especial air quality readings for Palmville of all things! How do they know that?
ReplyDeleteOkay. I get how the war in Ukraine could affect global air quality; nearby wildfires in Manitoba or across its provincial expanse, but I can't believe so much that we're the recipients of bad air, say from North Dakota really. Nothing happens out there anybody knows that.
Okay, maybe we're not in a good place in the event of a nuclear war (who is?) with the old underground missile silos west of here that are still maybe Russian targets and all; the prevailing winds might curse us. Damn it all, etc, etc.
As for you contributing so much to global warming with the little woodstove in the Shedeau, it's only when you burn your old lawnmower tires in it on occasion, that I could reasonably see an air quality issue. I mean, you've been warned a time or two --even when you do it after dark; it's the neighbors that complain. Hardly a no-brainer ...