SAUGUS — The Board of Health voted unanimously to approve the installation of an air-quality monitoring station in town.
Sean Dunn of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection gave a presentation on air-quality monitoring at a meeting of the board. Prior to the start of Dunn’s presentation, Chair Maria Tamagna said that Dunn had reached out at the perfect time.
“The timing was impeccable, because a couple of meetings ago, we had hired a private company that, unfortunately, wasn’t really what we thought it was,” Tamagna said.
After that, she said, Dunn reached out to her and informed her that the town qualified for air-quality monitoring from MassDEP.
Dunn began his presentation by showing a map of an area that had been highlighted in the department’s annual air-monitoring network plan from 2023.
“Every year, we present an air-monitoring network plan for the year, we post it for public comment, and we received multiple comments about a facility here, the WIN Waste facility, and the need for air monitoring in the area due to that facility,” Dunn said.
Dunn said that after receiving funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, MassDEP is now able to install a station in Saugus.
The station will be able to measure particulate matter (PM) 2.5 fine particulates; coarser PM10 particulates; black carbon, which Dunn said is an indicator of something “primarily like diesel smoke;” and wood smoke. Dunn said wood smoke would likely not be monitored at the station in Saugus.
Dunn said that the footprint of the station would not be large and that it is roughly twice the size of the lectern that he was standing at. He added that the station would be powered by electricity and subject to various EPA requirements with regard to where it can be placed.
“It’s going to be a certain distance away from roadways and a certain distance away from trees,” Dunn said. “So, with that in mind, we can’t necessarily put it just anywhere we want, but we can usually find a place that suits our needs.”
Dunn said that typically, MassDEP looks to put this sort of equipment on public space to avoid concerns about issues such as redevelopment.
After looking at wind-speed and wind-direction data, Dunn and his colleague consulted people who do modeling to determine which direction the predominant wind is blowing in town.
He said that while there are variations throughout the year, it was noted that the predominant wind was blowing east or southeast. In the springtime, he said, the wind changes to mostly blowing westerly, and northeast in the summer.
Those who were consulted informed Dunn and his colleague that the most significant point of impact is likely to be the Point of Pines area.
“I think that’s technically Revere, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t impacts anywhere else,” Dunn said.
Dunn ran the board through various options that were being considered with regard to the placement of the equipment, saying that there are numerous considerations that come into play when considering an ideal location.
“In general, the closer you’re getting to the facility, the more you’re… measuring the impact of that facility; the closer you get to a roadway, the more you’re measuring the impact of that roadway; the closer you’re getting to residences, the more you’re measuring what residents are exposed to,” Dunn said.
Dunn said that the equipment differs from other pieces of consumer-grade air-monitoring equipment, like the PurpleAir.
“The ones that we’ll be putting in are made for regulatory decisions — the data gets collected and compared to the EPA’s health-based standards and is submitted to (the) EPA… If we’re not meeting the (health-based standards), then the state is required to take action at that point,” he said.
Similarly to the smaller consumer-grade air-quality monitors, however, the station that was presented by MassDEP cannot discriminate between the composition of particulate matter and only determines the concentration of particles present in the air. However, Dunn said that the health-based standards set by the EPA, which determine harmful particulate levels, were developed with only the knowledge of the concentration of particles and not their composition. As a result, the information of what might be harmful to residents is still useful.
Director of Public Health John Fralick asked Dunn when the station would be set up. Dunn said that would be dependent on different factors, noting that one was installed previously in Chelsea in around four months’ time. The biggest factor for the town, he said, would be simply agreeing on the placement of the station.
“Once that’s done, we could start on our end, ordering and getting the procurement on (an) electrician going,” Dunn said.
The station would collect data every minute. The data would be consolidated into an hourly average, and then rolled up to a 24-hour average from those data points.
