This story is co-published with BridgeDetroit
- Wayne County has deployed 100 air quality monitors to empower residents with real-time data and hold industries accountable for pollution.
- The project, led by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, aims to improve community health and build a comprehensive data trove for better regulatory enforcement.
- Future phases include distributing up to 500 air quality monitors to asthmatic individuals, enhancing public engagement and data-driven policy changes.
MACKINAC ISLAND – Residents across Wayne County are being empowered with real-time air quality data – an initiative that the county’s top health official hopes will hold industry accountable and lead to stronger laws.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who heads Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, said deployment this month of 100 air quality monitors in the county’s 43 communities is already yielding data and community feedback.
“There’s been a lot of relief from the local communities that this exists,” El-Sayed told BridgeDetroit in an interview at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island.
“We want folks to feel like the county is watching and warning about what the risks look like and empowering folks to take action on the data that we see,” he added.
Wayne County has partnered with Detroit-based JustAir Solutions on the air monitoring project concentrated in areas, including the 48217 ZIP code in Southwest Detroit, where the consequences of air quality are the most damaging. Later this summer and into fall, El-Sayed said, the next phase of the project – distributing up to 500 air quality monitors to select adults and children with asthma and corresponding Bluetooth monitors for their inhalers – will roll out.
“We are trying to identify a way we could, as a county, engage to do two things. No. 1, how do we give people access to real-time information that can help them take control of their air quality personally,” he said. “But then…how do we build a trove of data that can help us hold some of these polluters accountable in ways that unfortunately state and federal policies just don’t?”
El-Sayed noted that federal and state regulations tend to be hemmed in by the way air pollution is monitored, which, he said, is evaluated by one criterion at a time.
“When you take a big breath in, it’s not like pollutants negate themselves,” he said. “We have one air. Measuring (criteria) separately is a disservice to the people for whom we’re measuring it and tends to benefit the corporations that don’t want us to take full account of the risks.”
The air quality monitors can measure various pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Some are capable of tracking additional pollutants like nitrogen oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3). The monitoring sites were determined with environmental justice data and recommendations from a task force of community leaders.
The system sends text alerts of problematic air quality conditions, and real-time, location-based air quality information is also available at justair.app and waynecounty.com/airquality.
Air quality data crucial for future policy
El-Sayed said since the network went live before the summer, when air quality normally declines, the county should have a good baseline by fall. But in the interim, he said, the first phase of the project is working by allowing residents to see, interpret and take heed of the data in real-time.
He expects the tool will also be useful when projects to increase emissions are proposed in highly polluted areas.
“We’d love the ability as a county to be able to enforce air quality regulations. Unfortunately, that’s not the way that public policy works,” he said, noting that power rests with the state and federal government, “but it may be someday in the future.”
“Part of the goal of this project in the short and long-term is that we’re armed with data to push for far better enforcement or better statutes on the books.”
Darren Riley, co-founder and CEO of JustAir, said in a statement that project partners are “confident this data will be used to spark behavioral changes in residents, as well as long-term environmental and policy changes.”
The air monitoring effort is among the post-pandemic measures that the county is undertaking to build trust with its communities around healthcare services and resources.
Going into COVID-19, El-Sayed noted, the county didn’t lean enough into connecting residents to its critical public health resources.
“One of the mistakes we made in public health departments around the country is that we didn’t show up on the problems that people knew that they needed help with,” he said. “And, at Wayne County, we’re recognizing that public health can’t just operate in the background and then show up when all of a sudden there’s a pandemic and then expect people to trust us.
“We’ve got to be right there on the issues that they know they face when they know they face them,” he said.
Wayne County, he said, is “trying to show up” on those issues, whether it’s taking action about adverse air quality or promoting the Health Choice program, which, he said, empowers about 8,000 in the county to know that they can get the healthcare they need when they need it, and Wayne County’s federally-qualified health centers in Wayne and Hamtramck.
“You are only as good as when you show up on the problems that people have,” he said. “We want to ensure that if we’re ever in a situation that we need to rely on that public trust that we’ve earned that trust.”