2005-07-22 - 8:27 a.m.

...take time to stop and smell the OZONE...

Great. Just wonderful. I have decided to prepare for our walking tour of Wales by walking to and from the college every day. That's about 6.5 miles (10.4 km) per day. Two hours is not a bad thing, and surprisingly it is even tolerable on days when temperatures climb above 90F (~34C). In fact, I think it makes me more heat tolerant. This seems like such a great thing that I'm planning to give up on the bus entirely in the fall. The walk doesn't take that much longer, and I'm getting out and enjoying some time to myself and some fresh air, or so I thought.

The only really awful part is crossing the Grand Central Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway - I might as well just suck air directly from an exhaust pipe.

I will be coordinating an environmental science lab this fall, and one lab involves testing exposure to tropospheric ozone. Unfortunately, the lab takes place in October when ozone levels have dropped substantially in the City - this means that the students don't get very much of a result on their ecobadges. I decided it would be interesting if the students could see a real reading. Soooo.....yesterday evening I wore one of the ozone test badges on my walk home.

White = no exposure
Pink = exposure to 40 ppb ozone
My badge turned PURPLE!!

I'll actually do the comparison with the color strip on Monday, but OUCH! Am I breathing more than 40 ppb of ozone per HOUR? Just for a reference, the Environmental Protection Agency's National Ambient Air Quality Standard maintains that short exposures as low as 8-12 ppb can cause acute health effects.

Here I thought that I was improving my health by walking. Now I see I get to choose between my lungs or my heart.