Richmond probably ranks among the top cities anywhere for information about air quality. As a result of AB 617, there are three sources of information about particulates in Richmond air. See https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/ab617-community-health/richmond/quarterly-report-documents/2021_0719_update_on_monitoring_projects_q2_2021-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=df3e290d9d194ed78fb1f9b99be68806 for a full report.

Unfortunately, AB 617 has not provided any significant revelations about the nature or source of air pollution in Richmond. At its onset, it was touted to provide information about the extent and source of coal dust but has utterly failed. Activists had also hoped the AB 617 air monitoring would confirm Chevron as a significant pollution source, but that also has foundered.

Data collected to date is pretty ambiguous,. Freeways, the port and rail corridors appear to be the main contributors of PM2.5 particulates. The study concludes that in the Cortex-Stege neighborhood, “There are many possible sources of PM2.5 nearby from that direction, including rail operations, roadway traffic, dust from unpaved sections of Spring Street, road construction, and operations at nearby facilities along Spring Street” and in the San Pablo-Rumrill neighborhood, there are “many possible sources of PM2.5 including railways, roadway traffic, restaurant and food truck operations, automobile dismantlers and scrapyards, construction, and dust from empty lots.” None of these mention Chevron.

That fact is that with the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay as the source of prevailing winds, Richmond actually enjoys pretty good air quality, except when the smoke from wildfires invades our airspace.

There are three monitoring sources as part of AB 617.

The first is real time Ramboll-Shair at  https://app.ramboll-shair.com/richmond. For more information about Ramboll-Shair, see https://americas.ramboll.com/webinar/shair-air-quality-map. There is also a smart phone app app.ramboll-shair.com. Generally, the air in Richmond looks pretty good, like the map from 9:00 AM, November 1, 2021. On September 10, 2020, with wildfire smoke, it was another story.

Figure 1 - Ramboll-Shair Richmond Air Quality Map for 9:00 AM, November 1, 2021

Figure 2 - Ramboll-Shair map from 4:00 AM, September 10, 2020.

Figure 3 - Richmond air on September 10,2020.
The second AB 617 monitoring source is Aclima at https://rspreport.aclima.tools/. This is not real time. It is aggregated data from August to October 2019. Not surprisingly, the areas showing highest PM2.5 were associated with rail corridors, ports and freeways.

Figure 4 - Aclima showing Richmond Area

Figure 5 =- Aclima Richmond Area showing hotspots

The third AB 617 source is Gravimetric PM Sampling Gravimetric PM sampling with the MiniVol samplers, which is almost completed. Groundwork Richmond had their monitoring van vandalized in March 2021 which delayed the last set of sampling. A near-final interactive dashboard of the analysis can be found at https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYTEzYmY0ZjItNTU1Ny00NWIxLTlhNjYtZGU0ZDZmNDg5NDViIiwidCI6ImM4ODIzYzkxLWJlODEtNGY4OS1iMDI0LTZjM2RkNzg5YzEwNiIsImMiOjh9.  

Figure 6 - Groundwork Richmond's Air Rangers

Figure 7 - Groundwork Richmond's Air Rangers

Figure 8 - Groundwork Richmond's Air Rangers
In addition to the AB 617 monitors, Chevron maintains a system of “fenceline monitors” that continuously measure a wide variety of pollutants as well as particulates. See https://www.richmondairmonitoring.org/.

Figure 9 - Chevron Fenceline Monitoring

Figure 10 - Chevron Fenceline Monitoring with selection for black carbon

Figure 11 - Chevron Fenceline Monitoring

Figure 12 - Chevron Fenceline monitoring
Richmond also has access to hydrogen sulfide monitors at the Canal Boulevard Wastewater Plant and in Point Richmond. See Hydrogen Sulfide Monitoring (richmondwpcp-h2s.org). If you sign up for alerts, you will receive something like the following when recommended maximums  are exceeded:

The latest observed H2S value was 76.2 ppb at 2021-09-15 6:05 AM PDT.
For more information. Please visit https://richmondwpcp-h2s.org/
If you would like to stop receiving these alerts, please unsubscribe. Do not reply to this email.
This alert was generated on 2021-09-15 6:05 AM PDT

Figure 13 - Hydrogen Sulfide Monitoring

Finally, there is the volunteer program Purple Air, https://www2.purpleair.com/collections/air-quality-sensors click on map.

Figure 14 - Purple Air map from November 1, 2021