Is Florida Department of Environmental Regulation adequately monitoring the air quality in the Glades? A recent article published through a partnership with the Palm Beach Post and ProPublica claimed “State officials used a single monitor to track air quality across the 400,000-acre sugar-growing region for at least eight years, despite telling their federal counterparts that it was malfunctioning and unfit to determine whether the air met standards set under the Clean Air Act.”

According to the FDEP, there was an issue with the monitor, but it’s not "malfunctioning."

“The state of Florida has one of the best outdoor air quality monitoring networks in the country, designed to provide the public with accurate air quality information, and currently meets or exceeds federal air monitoring requirements per the Clean Air Act. The network is comprised of more than 177 monitors at 90 sites strategically positioned across the state – including one in Belle Glade,” explained Alexandra Kuchta of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

“The monitor in Belle Glade is a non-regulatory monitor, meaning that while it measures criteria pollutants, it is not intended to provide data for regulatory purposes. Rather, this monitor provides real-time information that can be used to provide Floridians with real-time air quality data through DEP’s website and AirNow.

“To clarify, the Belle Glade continuous PM2.5 monitor is not ‘malfunctioning’; however, there is evidence that it biases high. For a few years, this continuous monitor was co-located with a second non-continuous Federal Reference Method (FRM) monitor. When DEP compared the results of the continuous versus the non-continuous FRM, the data showed that the original continuous monitor was higher.

“As a result of this determination, DEP petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2013 for a regulatory waiver to report this monitor as a non-regulatory instrument to provide Floridians with real-time air quality data,” she continued.

“In the near future, the Florida Department of Health – Palm Beach County will be replacing this monitor with a regulatory instrument to monitor PM2.5.

“It is important to note that while this monitor no longer provides data for regulatory purposes, data coming from it still shows that the area is meeting the PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), even with the high bias,” she added.

“For background, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets, and the department administers, the NAAQS program, which establishes health-based standards for six criteria pollutants, including fine particulate matter (PM 2.5). PM2.5 has an annual standard (12 μg/m3) and a 24-hour standard (35 μg/m3). For the short-term 24-hour standard, pollutant concentrations collected during the 24 hours are averaged. For an exceedance of the 24-hour NAAQS to occur, the 24-hour average must be greater than 35 μg/m3.  

“Fire-related activities, including prescribed burning, wildfires and agricultural burning, can lead to instantaneous readings of above 35 μg/m3, but the duration of these events is often short and in the vast majority of cases will not result in an exceedance of the 24-hour standard.

“You may be familiar with the recent installation of PurpleAir sensors by ProPublica to study air quality in Belle Glade, Florida,” she explained. “This data shows that instantaneous reading over 35 μg/m3 do occur, but these are short duration events and would likely not result in an exceedance. The data is what the department would expect for PM2.5 concentrations for fire-related events and is consistent with ambient monitoring data observations of other fire-related events around the state.   

“What you must note is that the short-term PM2.5 NAAQS is based on this 24-hour average. Looking at a single 10 minute reading or even an hour over the 35 μg/m3 standard is a single snapshot within the 24-hour period and would not necessarily indicate an exceedance of that 24-hour standard depending on the data collected during the other 23 hours,” she added.