PM 10 and PM 2.

5 are Air quality standards promulgated by the EPA in order

to control pollution created by say a coal fired power plant or a diesel

locomotive for example. First there was the PM 10 standard, meaning that

particulate matter 10 microns are greater had to mitigated through some sort

of control measures. I worked on such control measures strategies with an

engineer from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He had a mobile source

diesel engine particulate matter trap that he needed a power supply designed

for. Since I had experience working with plasma devices, he asked me to

work on a design for his power supply for a 24 volt DC diesel truck electrical

system. We submitted grants to GM and NYSERDA and he got the

NYSERDA grant. The plan was that I would take the money and work with

my team on the west coast to develop the power supply and then bring it back

to New York for testing. During this period I gave him improved ideas for

electrode design and an additional design that did not use an electrode. I

talked to him a couple years later and he asked me to come out to RIT where

he would have a high voltage engineer assist me with the idea I had given

them, as they were trying to further develop and implement the concept. This

was around the time I first started working at DEQ, so I suggested within Air
Quality that they implement a pilot program of this type of technology on

some state vehicles. As achieving the standards of Bush’s proposed Clean

Skies Act, could not only easily be met, but also exceeded. I had always

encouraged the folks at RIT to pursue a pre-combustion approach as I had

witnessed being utilized on GE Evolution series locomotives and via a device

engineered at MIT called the Plasmatron. It allowed not only reductions in

emissions to the order of 90%, but also increases in fuel efficiency near 30%,

where as post combustion technology only achieved reductions of emissions

of around 50%. I think at the time I suggested the same to the governor of

Washington, as they were part of the 13 state consortium that was pushing for

more restrictive standards than the clean skies act was proposing. Since I

knew the technology was available and cheap, I could see no reason for not

achieving better air quality standards while also conserving fuel and thus

creating reduced costs, which would inevitably help the economy by keeping

consumer prices down.

Still nothing. I talked to the guys at MIT and discussed the situation. I told

them I had been pushing RIT to do pre-combustion technology. I thought

worst case scenario they could get bought out for 300 million like MIT.

Meanwhile RIT was bugging me for plasma related was cleaning technology.

The folks at RIT gave me an idea and direction. I just passed it along to RIT

with no strings attached, since the last time there was a budget involved I was

given the typical professor to student treatment. i.e. professors take their

students ideas all the time and give them the short end of the stick. The

professors from RIT did take their technology to the private sector, so to say

with a Small Business Technology Transfer grant. ASU had this policy that

any idea you came up with on campus belonged to ASU. I suppose this was a

way for professors to work on their ideas for profit outside of the university in

hopes of achieving greater efficiency in getting those products to market. I

later tried to help these guys with a grant to help clean air by the border, but

my buddy who works in that program told me that the award had been pre-

determined to go to some other party, such as politics work… at least he saved

me the wasted effort of pushing that grant application.

So after some consternation, I have largely avoided efforts of this kind. I can

tell you that PM 2.5 manifested later as a more restrictive regulatory target,
before it I think their may have been PM 5. They just keep getting smaller on

the particles they target for mitigation. It is considered cheaper to mitigate

mobile source emissions than say coal fire power plants. Scrubber technology

only pollutes the water in an effort to clean the air anyway. Here’s some

information I learned from an epidemiologist from the EPA. 1 nano gram of

PM 2.5 inhaled reduces oxygen uptake by 30% for a period of 72 hours.

Clearly the pathways from pollution to disease are largely kept from the

public dialogue and are argued vigorously by industry representatives publicly

and behind lobbyist’s closed doors. Not just in air, but water and other

pathways to human exposure.

In a recent article, Arizona was proposed to be the worst in the country for PM

and or dust. The agency argued that the assertion was biased based on the fact

that the results only captured one location in the value. How do the results

below fair with respect to multiple locations in the valley?

PM 2.5
 SITE NAME MAX 24-HR VALUE

(ug/m3) MAX AQI

data derived from light-scattering equipment)

For maps go to: http://www.airnow.gov/

SITE NAME MAX 24-HR VALUE (ug/m3) MAX AQI AQI COLOR CODE 10.0

Durango
Dysart 2.2
Estrella Mountain Park 5.0
Phoenix Supersite 14.1
South Phoenix 7.2
Vehicle Emissions Lab 5.7
West Phoenix 8.8

PM 10

SITE NAME MAX 24-HR VALUE (ug/m3) MAX AQI AQI

Buckeye 34
Central Phoenix 32
Combs School(Pinal County 33
Durango 33
Dysart 23
Glendale 26
Greenwood 39
Higley 31
Maricopa (Pinal County) 36
Phoenix Supersite 24
South Phoenix 34
West Chandler 28
West Forty Third 30
West Phoenix 32
Zuni Hills 25

Apparently in 1997, Arizona was in attainment with respect to

PM 2.5 standards.
When you ride your bike to work and it feels like you just got

done smoking a pack of cigarettes…