Your heard it here first on Daily Kos..….we’ve been experiencing an air pollution episode in the Midwest that started yesterday in the Great Lakes and has moved with a slow moving high pressure ridge in the Eastern United States over Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states.
Today, New York City and Long Island, portions of Massachusetts and New Jersey are the most polluted presently with Code Red air pollution conditions (Unhealthy) with large adjacent areas with Code Orange conditions (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups).
http://www.airnow.gov
[see “current AQI” tab]
Tuesday's air pollution event in Michigan is continuing today, primarily in Southeastern
Michigan. At 5 PM, 6 monitors in the SEMCOG area are showing Code Orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) as well at Otisville, near Flint and Harbor Beach in the Thumb. The highest Air Quality Index is at New Haven in Northern Macomb County at 136 AQI.
The event continues because of a slow-moving high pressure center in the Eastern
United States below a stationary front running east-west through
Northern Michigan:
Ongoing problems with elevated Air Quality Index associated with smoke/haze
long range transport occurring in Michigan and eastward have been written up
in the U.S. Air Quality Blog, a collaboration of NOAA and University of Maryland:
Michigan’s Air Pollution Episode Yesterday:
Yesterday's haze event in Michigan was particularly noticeable over Southeastern
Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Erie in this NASA MODIS imagery from
yesterday:
Yesterday, Muskegon had the highest Air Quality Index in the United States, and it would have
probably been even higher if there was a PM 2.5 monitor co-located with the ozone monitor located there (nearest PM 2.5 monitor to Muskegon is in Grand Rapids).
Yesterday, there were excursions over EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone of
70 ppbv (8 Hour Average) at 24 out of the 27 ozone monitors operated by MDEQ in the state of Michigan. See this MDEQ data table “Max Yesterday”:
The highest measured 8 hour ozone averages were at Muskegon (87 ppbv), New Haven (85 ppbv), Coloma (83 ppbV), Port Huron (82 ppbv), Grand Rapids (81 ppbv) and North Detroit (7 mile), Holland, Jennison and Frankfort (in NW Michigan) all at 80 ppbv . The event is an illustration of how well aged polluted air masses from outside of Michigan can be transported into our state causing air quality problems.
The event also illustrates that the alleged claim that zip=48217 in SW Detroit is the "most polluted" in
the State of Michigan frequently heard in newspaper articles, a recent Newsweek magazine article and in proclamations by the Sierra Club is an erroneous fabrication as shown by this current smog season, high air pollution episode which is the typical pattern of historical smog problems in Michigan.