In accordance with the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, EPA has required more extensive monitoring of ozone and its precursors in areas with persistently high ozone levels. 

 

Photochemical Assessment Monitoring Sites (PAMS) is an ambient air monitoring site which collects and reports detailed data for volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides, ozone and meteorological parameters. 

 

The data set is intended to assist modelers and regulatory agencies in predicting days with poor air quality from ozone and fine particulate matter. Each PAMS analyzer is co-sited with ozone and oxides of nitrogen analyzers as well as meteorological instruments to enhance the value of the data generated.  They are sited to meet one of four characteristics:

 

1- upwind of urban areas to capture VOC ozone precursors

 

2- in an area of maximum impact from an urban area generating VOC’s from traffic and industrial processes

 

3- downwind of an urban area to determine the changes in VOC levels as ozone formation takes place

 

4- far downwind of an urban area to represent the VOC and ozone precursors leaving the area, and potentially impacting other downwind locations

 

Current Connecticut PAMS sites represent characteristics 1, 2, and 3 above.

 

The data set also provides information on selected air toxic components.  However, the PAMS sites are not located in areas meant to optimize air toxic impact at the monitor. PAMS networks typically monitor 56 target hydrocarbons and 2 carbonyl compounds, ozone, oxides of nitrogen (NOx and/or NOy), and meteorological measurements. 

 

 

 

Compliance Analysis Database and Information System (CADIS) is housed at the EPA/Compliance and Field Operations. This database contains data that determines if a facility’s air stacks are within emission compliance. 

 

 

 

Haze Monitoring is not in a database format.  It looks at PM 2.5 data (elemental, organic, ionic species).  Data is sent to Colorado State University and lives in a national database used for regional haze analysis/modeling.  Haze monitoring is used for verifying airmass trajectory analyses and source-receptor modeling. 

 

 

 

Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management’s (NESCAUM) purpose is to exchange technical information, and to promote cooperation and coordination of technical and policy issues regarding air quality control between Northeast states, including New England, NY, and NJ.

 

 

 

The Ambient Air Monitoring network has 25 remote Pc’s and 2 local Pc’s, Poll 1 and Poll 2.  Poll 2 is located at 9 Windsor Ave. Windsor and Poll 1 is located at 79 Elm Street in Hartford.  Poll 2 calls remote Pc’s every 8 hours and uploads the data.  At the end of the month all the data is transferred from poll 2 to poll 1 in Hartford.  The data group then makes all the checks on the data, converts it to AIRS which is the required format and sends it to EPA.

 

The Ambient air monitoring data base has all the air quality data values.

 

 

 

The EPA has developed a computerized

 

ozone mapping system (OMS) that will accept near real time ozone data from state and local air

 

quality management agencies, and generate maps for analysis and public display purposes. The E-DAS Ozone Mapping System module is an ademdum to Ambient data acquisition and reporting system.

 

 

ESC E-DAS for Windows contains most of the criteria pollutants required to be monitored and reported by the State of Connecticut to E.P.A. under the PPA grant. The data in the ESC system (POLL1 & POLL2) are raw unvalidated data. It reports hourly averages for Carbon Monoxide, Sulfur Dioxide, Oxides of Nitrogen (No, No2, Nox), Ozone and continuous Particulate Matter (PM10 & PM2.5). It also reports hourly averages for Meteorological Parameters: wind speed, wind direction, temperature, dew point, solar radiation, barometric pressure and precipitation. After the data has been Quality Assured it is reported to the AIRS AQS system at NCC in North Carolina.

 

Our non-continuous data (PM10, sulfates & nitrates) received from the State Health Department are processed on the SAS SAROAD legacy system and converted to AQS format for submission to AIRS.

 

Our Precision and Accuracy data is processed in an Excel 2000 workbook with Visual Basic for applications used to automate validation, look ups, and generation of transaction files. These files when complete are also submitted to AIRS.

 

This database contains most of the criteria pollutants required to be monitored and reported by the State of Connecticut to E.P.A. under the PPA grant.

 

 

 

Air Emission Inventory and Point Source/Area/ Mobile (SAS) These two databases (Air Emission Inventory, Point Source/Area/Mobile (SAS)) hold data consisting of Air Emission data from Point Source, Area and Mobile sources.  All this data is sent to the National Emission Inventory Database (NEI).  EPA's National Emission Inventory (NEI) database contains information about sources that emit criteria air pollutants and their precursors, and hazardous air pollutants. The database includes estimates of annual air pollutant emissions from point, nonpoint, and mobile sources in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. EPA collects information about sources and releases an updated version of the NEI database every three years.

 

 

 

Fine Particulate Black Carbon Database:  Fine particulate black carbon (BC) is a ubiquitous component of primary source fine particulate matter (PM2.5), such as that emitted directly from vehicles or boiler stacks.  In contrast, secondary PM2.5 results from chemical transformations of precursor components from sources at distances of hundreds to thousands of miles upwind.  These particles are formed from sulfate, nitrate or ammonium ions in the atmosphere. 

 

 

 

Connecticut DEP monitors BC at multiple sites primarily to obtain information indicating the nature and extent of Connecticut’s local contributions to PM2.5.  Additionally, BC is associated with toxic air pollution, since organic toxics that are usually present in combustion by-products, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), have a strong tendency to adsorb to BC particles.  Some of the BC monitoring was funded in part by the National Air Toxic Trends Study (NATTS), stipulating that the BC data be maintained in the EPA Air Quality System (AQS) national database.

 

 

 

The BC database maintained at the Air Bureau serves to store raw data, process raw data into validated mathematically composited one-hour average values, to prepare text files specifically formatted for uploading to the AQS database, to prepare data sets for various purposes as needed for Air Bureau functions, and to perform analyses of trends over time and in comparison with other pollutants and meteorological variables

 

 
Ambient Air

 

Fine Particulate
AIRS/AQS  AIRS is the Aerometric Information Retrieval System, and AQS is the Air Quality Subsystem.  These terms are used somewhat interchangeably, but AQS is the database and AIRS is the overall data structure. 

 

 

 

This is a Federal repository for air quality data, and the ultimate destination for concentration data collected from the CT DEP’s fine particulate (a.k.a. PMFine, or PM2.5) monitoring network.  State Code, County Code, Site Code, Parameter Code, Method Code, Owner Code (POC), Interval, and Date Code identify the data.  Each Monitor has an owner who can submit data and modify data, but any user can retrieve data.  The CT DEP uses AIRS/AQS as a remote database since there is no comprehensive in-house data repository.

 

 

 

The CT DEP, and other state, federal, and regional agencies retrieve data from AIRS for their own uses.  These include characterization of regional air quality, comparison of air data between different regions, and modeling of air pollution events.

 

 

 

Fine Particulate Database QA reporting. Fine Particulate Database/MSAccess QA/Reporting Database.  The CT DEP uses a MSAccess-based data management system to collect, edit, and report data from its Fine Particulate Monitoring Network.  The data comes from hard-copy lab reports (filter weighing), hard-copy field sheets, and performance data downloaded from the actual samplers and imported to the MSAccess database.

 

 

 

This database contains many pieces of peripheral data regarding collection and holding times, sampling parameters, sampler maintenance, ambient conditions, and laboratory conditions, as well as comments from the field and laboratory technicians.  This data is used to ensure that the data complies with the federal standards set forth in the Fine Particulate monitoring guidelines (Federal Register Vol 62, No 138, July 18, 1997; Appendix L to Part 50), and the CT DEP’s internal Quality Assurance Program. 

 

 

 

The primary product of the database is concentration and ancillary data formatted for input to the AIRS/AQS federal data repository.