CORPORATE Area and St Catherine residents could, as early as next week, get the full rundown on the levels of pollutants to which they were exposed, courtesy of the most recent Riverton City dump fire.

The fire, which burned for more than a week, caused several communities to be blanketed by smoke, prompting a rash of respiratory complaints from residents of affected areas such as Cooreville Gardens, Gregory Park and Waterford, and renewed concern over the management of solid waste on the island.

“We are now putting together the full report of the assessment that was done during the period the 6th to the 13th [of February]. As soon as we are finished, it will be made available,” said Peter Knight, chief executive officer for the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), which did the air quality tests in conjunction with the Ministry of Health (MOH).

He said Monday that the report should have been completed by yesterday and that Minister of Land, Water, Environment and Climate Change Robert Pickersgill would be briefed — with the public informed thereafter.

But the minister, in a statement at a joint press briefing at Jamaica House on February 17, provided some insight into what the findings might be.

“NEPA does monitoring of the major industrial facilities in Jamaica as part of its routine air quality management programme. In response to the recent fire at the Riverton disposal site and in order to assess air quality for Washington Gardens, Red Hills and Portmore, portable air quality monitoring equipment from NEPA and MOH were deployed in these areas. Data from a permanent Marcus Garvey Drive station was also utilised,” he said then.

“The results to date for Washington Gardens, Red Hills and Marcus Garvey, show air quality data for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and particulate matter less than 10-microns (PM10) are within the 24-hour standards. The readings show that PM10, NO2, and SO2 are within the moderate band,” Pickersgill added.

While confirming that the substances sited by the minister were those tested for, NEPA would disclose no further details, conceding only that there were three bands within which readings fall, notably ‘moderate’, ‘good’ and ‘unhealthy’.

“Good air quality is actually 0-50 [micrograms per cubic metres]. Fifty micrograms per metre cube means that the air quality for people who have no respiratory disease or asthma, it is safe for them to operate within that zone or area. Moderate [51-100] means that those persons who have past or recent history of upper respiratory disease, [such as] asthma and so on, they should limit their exposure. Unhealthy [more than 150] means it is not safe for anyone to breathe the air,” Gary Campbell, head of the Air Quality Management Programme Focal Point at NEPA, told Environment Watch.

Meanwhile, in his February 17 statement, Pickersgill revealed that there were some substances for which they had not been able to test, notably volatile organic compounds (VOCs), persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals and carbon monoxide, “as these are not monitored based on the analysis of emissions for existing industries across the island”.

“Such equipment and maintainance would cost approximately $10 million per location annually,” he added.

NEPA has, however, said that the failure to test for the additional substances does not in any way impair the validity of the findings they are to release.

“The three parameters that we outlined to you — PM10, SO2 and NO2 — are good, excellent air quality pollutants to use to evaluate the air quality at any location,” said Knight.

“PM10 is a mixture of both solid and also any liquefied small particulate, especially like that haze you see in the smoke. Most of that is particulate matter. As a matter of fact, when you actually do an estimate of what is given off by any dump fire or dump, [the] two main pollutants [are] carbon monoxide and particulate matter. PM10 in particular is one of the better indicators of good or bad air quality. So the others would follow that…” added Campbell.

Still, the NEPA boss said there was no question that some value could be derived from purchasing the equipment to test for additional pollutants, to broaden the scope of their data and do differential analyses.

NEPA currently operates three monitoring stations to assess air quality in the Kingston Metropolitan Area — one of them at Cross Roads, the other along Old Hope Road and the third at Harbour View. The sites cost US$30,000 to set up.

“We get PM10 data every six days as required by our regulations and guidelines for particulate matter. There are also up to [seven] other private sites, which, by condition of their licence, allow them to put in [seven] different monitoring sites in the KMA that measures particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide. So in all we have 10 locations in the KMA that monitor for particulate matter,” said Campbell.

There are also 50 other private sites across the island from which NEPA gathers air quality data.