2.5 Particulate Matter Health Panelists at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor Center, Tuesday evening, Oct. 25, 2011. Panelists from left, Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor, Luke Hopkins; Chung Nim Ha Active Program Manager, Alaska Division of Public Health; Dr. Joe McLaughlin, Chief ADPH Section of Epidemiology; Dr. Owen Hanley, local Pulmonologist; Rachel Kossover, Public Health Analyst at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Paul Garbe, Center for Disease Control National Center for Environmental Health, Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch Chief and James Conner, FNSB Air Quality Manager. Tori Middelstadt/News-Miner intern
Fairbanks North Star Borough Air Quality Manager, James Conner, presents the boroughs air quality levels at the 2.5 Particulate Matter Health Presentation at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor Center, Tuesday evening, Oct. 25, 2011. Tori Middelstadt/News-Miner intern
The forum, which included presentations by experts form the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with state and local officials, answered questions largely about preventative measures for homes, schools and for individuals working outside.
It’s a small, but promising change for public sentiment, which has largely been skeptical of studies highlighting health risks, said Borough Air Quality Manager Jim Conner.
“I think this was a more informed audience than (previous forums),” Conner said. “I attribute that to the dialogue created by the recent debate over air quality.”
It’s a point that has been raised by many health advocates in the wake of the failure of Proposition 2 in elections earlier this month. Although it failed by a wide margin many felt it helped people realize that dirty air can be bad for health.
The majority of questions raised by the audience centered on finding out what preventative measures to combat the Fairbanks-area air pollution problems.
Some suggested air filtration systems for homes or rooms, but warned face masks are not a realistic solution because most don’t filter out the hazardous PM 2.5 which is linked to heart and lung diseases.
The event included two presentations by CDC employees on the health impact of woodsmoke on individuals and communities, along with a presentation by Conner on local monitoring efforts.
One study showed an increased number of heart and respiratory hospital visits in the Fairbanks area when small particulate matter pollution, known as PM 2.5, increased. The study was presented by Rachel Kossover, who co-authored the study while working in Alaska with the CDC.
Kossover declined to say what level of risk might be acceptable in Fairbanks. She said it’s the CDC’s role to provide information, not to provide regulations.
“I think the level of risk is up to an individual community,” she said. “It’s like smoking and smoking in bars, 10 years ago you could have smoked anywhere.”
More information and answers to the questions from Tuesday night’s forum will be posted on the Borough’s Air Quality website at www.co.fairbanks.ak.us/airquality/ in the following days.
Where is rationalcitizen past his bed time?
You guys don't have any creditability because: you refuse to tell us the results of how LONG it takes for cooking flour or wood ash or house hold dust or to fall 10',
OR why u pass of steam from a chimney and cars as wood smoke,
OR explain how 2.5s in downtown FBX make people go to the hosp who live in Salcha - 40 miles away,
OR how a 2.5 travels 8 miles through the forest and over hills by suspending gravity,
OR why we are safe from 2.5s in in our homes from forest fire wood smoke in the summer but NOT in the winter,
OR why were NOT all killed when the forest fire smoke cuts visibility to 250' or less and the 2.5s are way over 1,000 in the summer vs 35 in the winter.
Nor, have you explained: how a 2.5 in downtown Fairbanks cause me to get up in the middle of the night- when drink a glass of water before going to bed.
Inquiring minds want to know
Again long day at work and the only 'rubes' I see are fools claiming the earth is flat, we didn't land on the moon and PM 2.5 isn't a horrible killer.
Sorry but please go to http://northpolecleanair.wordpress.com/
and read at least of handful of the 100 studies done on PM 2.5 and the findings that show evidence of wide ranging damage to the human body.
Deny out of ignorance? Go read and be convinced.
Deny out of Stupidity, God help us.
Direct quote above....as I am tiring of dealing with fools...Mankind survived by having a life expectancy of 38 years in 1850. Wood for heat, wood for cooking, and what do you know wood for a very short life.
So you may support no controls on burning but you are also binding yourself to a shorter life. and for everyone exposed to your foulness.
People used to do a lot of things in the past - people used powdered lead as a beauty product, for example. Just because people have done something previously doesn't make it good.
Read the health studies. Don't like the local FMH one? Pick another. There are hundreds. Woodsmoke in Fairbanks is harming actual people, who are your friends and neighbors.
Those of you who are turning this into a partisan political issue do wrong to our community. It's about health.
The PM2.5 problem is bigger in winter than in summer. We have 4x as many bad air days in winter as we do in summer. 1AhHa likes to write about 1000 microgram/cubic meter days in the summer. Well, North Pole has 2000 microgram/cubic meter days in the winter.
If evolution is true, we are immune from wood smoke!
It's all government propaganda
--He won by 180 votes. I recall. Also, do you remember the News Miner sabotaged Tammy Wilson's election .
Ask rational citizen about how far wood smoke travels from a campfire travels?
Yelp! My car has a air filter to take out cigarette smoke smoke, too.
Where have you been? I was beginning to think a 2.5 picked you up and spirited you to the mother ship on the dark side of Jupiter.
Too much fighting, would you all be working together if we were working on getting clean natural gas to Fairbanks and in homes? Would it be an acceptable alternative to everyone? It would for me, if I had cheap clean gas to burn I wouldn't use my stove nearly as much.
Comment it will not do the majority of the people – better than two thirds of the borough residents – any good. Because the cost of installing pipe is prohibitively expensive. Also, because there is no reason why that natural gas be sold cheaper than oil – per million BTU.
The best way to help the borough residents would be to building power line to the North Slope and generate electricity for everyone and the rail belt including Anchorage and Fairbanks.
I'm really not into pipe. Since God told ex-Governor Hickle about putting a fresh water line from Alaska to California under the ocean.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20126172-503544/who-will-benefit-from-obamas-student-loan-plan/
Nah, just give every polluter a crackpipe filled with woodsmoke, and if they survive the day breathing that crap then they can keep their boiler.
Sigh. And I guess the air in your car, which sits in the soup 24 hours a day is as clean as a babies bottom.
If the smoke is so bad, why did the contractor get a permit this week to burn all the brush on the south side of the Mitchell which smoked out half the town??
---Because the borough and the .EPA knows this whole issue has nothing but a smoke screen to make more government jobs and pass another worthless law. For a person to be quote "harmed" he must be (1)outdoors, (2)doing vigorous physical exercise, (3)in a sensitive group – the elderly, the young, the sick, and (4)the demon 2.5's must be over 40 parts per microgram per cubic meter. SEE FNSB clean air web page http://www.co.fairbanks.ak.us/airquality/Docs/ParticulateLevels.pdf
Notice they don't recommend anyone cover their nose with a sheet of toilet paper or take any other protective measure until 2.5s reach 500 they do not recommend staying indoors.
Forest fires are generally beneficial to the forest in the long run....
Forest fires or brushfires or grass fires have been around ever since forests started to grow several hundred million years ago.
To me, whatever goes on with the burning forest as long since been accommodated by evolution.
When we build a city like Los Angeles- using wood we are sequestering an enormous amount of carbon.
Aside from the bunk circulated to goad the politicians to in act another tax to support the United Nations leaches; I haven't seen any credible evidence suggesting humans make much of a difference one way or another.
One thing which is absolutely certain – we will make 0 difference when spread over 100,000,000 years.
The Antarctic ice core samples show we have had 9 intermissions in the Ice Age during the last 400,000 years. During most of the 400,000 years the northern hemisphere was frozen.
If the smoke is so bad, why did the contractor get a permit this week to burn all the brush on the south side of the Mitchell which smoked out half the town??