Train air quality project underway!

Hello folks:

First, let me thank you again for contributing to ourproject to study the impact of coal and diesel trains in the Bellinghamarea.   Our project was funded viaExperiment.com from your contributions.

I just want to give you a quick update on where we areat.   Since starting the project inDecember, our main focus has been to calibrate our particulate monitor, carbondioxide sensors and to get the meteorological and data systems ready togo.  Calibration took several weeks as itrequires us to collocate with an existing an air quality monitor.   Fortunately the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency(www.pscleanair.org) has allowed us to collocateour sensors at one of their ongoing monitoring sites in the Seattle area forthe past 3 weeks.  This has gone greatand we are nearly ready to head up to B’ham.  I am in the final stages of identifying our site in Whatcom County.  Since we work at private homes or on privateproperty to look at air quality, the exact location will not be made public,but rest assured the data will be available to all.  I expect we will deploy our instrumentationin the next 2 weeks.   I’ll send somepictures of the instrumentation and my team in the next lab note.

Best Regards and Happy New Year to all supporters ofScience!

Dan Jaffe