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Indoor Air Quality
Going Green
Going Green: Indoor Air Quality
At the new headquarters of the Center of Excellence in Syracuse, they will be studying all aspects of indoor air quality, but in order to understand indoor air quality you have to understand the quality of the air outdoors and that's exactly what Dr. Myron Mitchell and his colleagues at Clarkson and Cornell Universities are doing.
"An exciting part about this, it's a major operation with respect to analyzing air pollution within the city. We've got two major highway intersecting here, Interstates 81 and 690. We've already done some preliminary work that shows those highways affect the air pollution within this city," said Dr. Myron Mitchell of SUNY-ESF.
The same meteorological and climatological instruments have also been installed at a site in a residential neighborhood to they can make an urban-residential air quality comparison.
"We're measuring air pollutants such as nitrous oxide. It's commonly called Nox. We're also measuring the concentration of ozone, two important urban air pollutants. We're also looking at the types of fine particles and fine particles are another type of air pollution. These are things that get in people's lungs," Dr. Mitchell said.
And even inside a building people are affected by the air outside the building.
"Obviously there's always an exchange between outdoors and the indoors so the quality can affect possible building designs. For instance, opening windows at certain times. If you're going to open the windows to bring in outside air then it's important to know the quality of that air," said Dr. Mitchell.
In addition to the two stationary testing sites, researchers are also using a mobile lab to take readings around the city and they expect the results to be useful as a decision is made whether to keep the elevated portions of Interstate 81 through the city.
"We're not the only city dealing with this. A lot of cities have large roads, elevated roads within the cities," Dr. Mitchell said.
