By Marcia Parnell
Initiated by Berkshire Regional Planning Commission Senior Planner Britney Danials, working closely with town officials, two sites in Becket are now monitoring air quality 24/7/365 as part of the Berkshire County Clean Air Project, a county-wide effort to improve knowledge about neighborhood-level air quality in support of public health, environmental planning, and community awareness.
Real-time data is available at berkshirecleanair.org, which defines Air Quality Index (AQI) levels. Once there, click on the Visit Berkshire Clean Air Dashobard link to see a snapshot of Becket’s AQI.
There are twenty-six outdoor and thirty-six indoor monitoring sites throughout Berkshire County, and the data will be compiled and analyzed at the end of three years. Becket was chosen because its higher-elevation areas mean air can become trapped under certain conditions, and the impact of that is considered important to monitor and understand.
Danials noted that another selection consideration was the town’s older population and the number of children at Becket Washington School and the summer camps, who by virtue of their age are vulnerable to poor air quality. But ultimately, she explained, “Everybody should care about air quality. I don’t think people are aware of how much it can impact how we feel, how we think, and how it affects our respiratory systems.”
The initiative is particularly timely given the health concerns raised locally by the wildfire smoke disasters that occurred over the past two summers. But as Danials explained, “Smoke is obvious. Air pollution is usually invisible and can go undetected without monitoring.”
The outdoor monitor is located at the Becket Town Park. An indoor monitor resides at the Becket Athenaeum. Why measure indoor air quality? According to Danials the data will help compare outdoor to indoor levels during air-quality incidents when residents are told to remain indoors. Both indoor and outdoor data may also help with planning for cooling and clean-air centers in the future.
The good news is that at the time of this writing, Becket’s outdoor AQI is 8, and anything under 50 is considered “satisfactory.” But with climate change and uncertainty about environmental impacts outside of our control in the future, knowing there’s a place to check local air quality takes one less unknown off the table.
