Quadrant AQM Project
Dr. Vivek Ravichandran leading a community listening session in the Quadrant.
The Route 50-Sheriff Road-Kenilworth Ave Quadrant in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is home to various sources of air pollution, both mobile and stationary, including metal and e-waste recycling facilities, concrete block plants, and heavily trafficked roads. With the nearest federal reference monitors situated 6 miles away, there is a critical need for hyperlocal air quality monitoring.
In 2022, the region became the proposed site for a Claybrick Road Bus Terminal project. To address this, the Towns of Cheverly and Fairmount Heights, along with the City of Seat Pleasant teamed up with the University of Maryland in 2023 to expand an existing Cheverly hyperlocal PurpleAir particulate matter (PM) monitoring network into the other Quadrant communities. The existing community-engaged infrastructure has been expanded to deploy low-cost real-time PurpleAir (n=21) and Met One C-12 (n=5) monitors to measure PM and black carbon in the Quadrant. A spatiotemporal analysis was performed for January - July 2024.
Overall, pooled average PM2.5 levels met both the daily (35 ug/m3) and annual (9 ug/m3) health-based standards set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but exceeded above World Health Organization (WHO) annual guideline (5 ug/m3). Pooled average PM10 levels met both the EPA and WHO daily and annual standards/guidelines. While no federal standard exists for BC, average levels at Fairmont Heights High School were above the literature-based threshold (600 ng/m3) where cognitive inhibition and respiratory distress have been reported.
Additionally, Robert Gray Elementary School had the highest PM levels in the study area. Our results highlight the significant impact of diesel truck idling and locally unwanted land use (LULU) activity on the Quadrant, and provide actionable data for targeted inspection efforts in the area, permitting decision-making, and helping advance Justice40, President Biden’s Executive Order 14096, and Governor Wes Moore’s Executive Order on Climate Change at the granular scale.