PILOT PERSONAL SMOG ALERT SYSTEM LAUNCHED
More than 70 Southland residents have started receiving air quality information via pager in a test of the nation’s first fully automated and personalized system for alerting people to unhealthful air.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District has teamed up with PageNet and Metrocall in a four-month pilot program that if successful, will be offered to residents throughout the Southland later this summer. The program is free to participants during the test period.
"Our new paging system will provide timely notice of smog alerts to everybody concerned about air pollution," said Roy Wilson, who represents Riverside County on AQMD’s Governing Board. "It’ll be particularly valuable to people in the Inland Empire, where smog episodes now occur most frequently."
AQMD recruited volunteers through a public information campaign and began distributing pagers on loan last week. Residents participating in the pilot program include a cross-section of parents with asthmatic children, coaches and athletes from all four counties in AQMD’s jurisdiction. Respiratory patients, school officials and physicians also would be targeted in a permanent program.
"I’ve got two kids with asthma so the air quality is a big concern of mine," said Roxana Aalberts, an Alta Loma resident participating in the pilot program. Air quality information provided via pager "would just be an added indicator that maybe I should be concerned and cut down on their physical activity," she said.
During the first phase of the test, the alphanumeric pagers will receive and display daily air quality forecasts for all Southland areas. Each area will be forecast for good, moderate, unhealthful or very unhealthful air quality, corresponding respectively to 0-50, 51-100, 101-199 and 200-295 on the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI).
In addition, volunteers will receive instant notification on their pagers any time air quality reaches an unhealthful level above PSI 100.
AQMD will provide the notifications free to paging service firms, but once the test phase is completed and the service goes full-scale, individuals would have to purchase their own pagers and paging service.
"In the past we’ve had to rely on the mass media to alert most people when the air is unhealthful," said Barry Wallerstein, AQMD’s executive officer. "Now, technology allows us to communicate directly with people through existing paging networks.
"For the first time, we’ll be able to directly alert coaches and recreation department directors of unhealthful air so they can reschedule activities to minimize the exposure of children. We’ll be able to reach people with health problems who are more susceptible to smog.
"Readily available, low-cost text pagers also will allow a wider range of adults to obtain instant smog alerts so they can better plan their own activities, such as jogging, which increase exposure to smog."
More than 30 air monitoring stations throughout the region measure air pollution around the clock. The data is fed via modem and phone line to a central computer at AQMD headquarters in Diamond Bar. This information then is automatically sent to paging companies via Internet e-mail whenever high levels of pollution are recorded. These companies then initiate an alphanumeric page conveying a message to participants in the test program.
Currently, AQMD faxes a daily forecast of smog levels to schools and other interested parties. Before the 1990s, AQMD had to broadcast the information on an antiquated radio system to schools and make personal phone calls to the media.
The pager notification program is part of a work plan developed by the Governing Board’s Ad Hoc Inland Empire Committee, comprised of Wilson, Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, San Bernardino County Supervisor Jon Mikels and Montclair City Councilman Leonard Paulitz. The full Board approved the program in September 1998.
The Board called for the pager notification system, along with other new initiatives, to respond to rising concern among Inland Empire residents about the eastward migration of the region’s peak ozone pollution in recent years.
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