13-05-2025
Jefferson County program monitors air quality in at-risk neighborhoods
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — An air quality monitoring program funded by a three-year grant from the Environmental Protection Agency is underway for underserved communities in Jefferson County.
This is the second year of the grant to monitor the air in at-risk neighborhoods.
The goal of this was to give certain communities low-cost, high-quality monitoring equipment at 10 different sites to provide real-time particulate matter measurements on easy-to-understand dashboards that the public can use.
'Typically, underserved or disproportionately impacted communities are exposed to a greater amount of pollution just because of their location,' said Jim Rada, the Environmental Health Services Division Director at Jefferson County Public Health. 'They may be located near highways, near industrial areas, another in other areas where activities that generate particulate matter are located. So this grant was specifically designed by EPA to locate these monitors in these communities to give those residents a better opportunity to understand air quality in real time in their communities.'
The devices measure particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less, picking up on things like car exhaust, burning wood, fossil fuels or wildfire smoke.
'We saw higher levels of particulates during the fire over in Golden in particular. And then we set up a couple of additional monitors at the evacuation center for the quarry fire so we were able to keep track of where we were moving people or where pollution was the greatest as it related to the populations,' said Rada.
The hope is that this information would allow people to make good decisions about their health, about whether to spend time outside, how to protect themselves.
This is an extension of Denver's Love My Air program. This app will be especially helpful during wildfires.
This program is only set to last 3 years, but the final year they will work to see if there are resources, to continue the program beyond that.
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