Testing of Cavity Attenuation Phase Shift Technology For Siting Near-Road NO2 Monitors

PI: Tim Larson (UW), tlarson@uw.edu
Dates: 9/1/13 – 8/31/2015
Final Project Report: PacTrans-53-UW-Larson

Recent research has identified the public health importance of air pollution exposures near busy roadways.  As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) significantly revised its Nitric oxide (NO2) air quality standard in 2010.  The current regulatory focus has shifted from assessment of longer-term (annual average) NO2 concentrations measured at locations away from busy roads to shorter-term (1-hour average) concentrations measured at locations near busy roads.  Even though EPA has developed extensive guidelines for siting traditional air quality monitors that are located relatively far from roads, their siting guidance for near-road NO2 monitors is not yet officially established. Therefore this project proposes to test a more direct approach to siting near-road NO2 sampling locations using a state-of-the-art NO2 monitor that is no more expensive than traditional EPA chemiluminesce-base monitors, is much more readily deployed on a mobile platform, and can ultimately be used as the regulatory monitor at the official sampling location.