Project leader: Erik Krogh

A peek inside Erik Krogh's research lab (photo left). The team is working on developing advanced, sensitive, mobile real-time monitoring techniques that provide both qualitative and quantitative air quality data.

This project aims to develop advanced, sensitive, mobile real-time monitoring techniques that provide both qualitative and quantitative air quality data. The research will integrate multivariate statistical pattern recognition techniques and online calibration techniques with real-time, mobile membrane introduction mass spectrometry (MIMS) to classify air sample composition and identify dominant sources of influence.

Combined with additional on-board air quality and meteorological sensors, the project team will evaluate multivariate statistical techniques, such as Principle Component Analysis (PCA), to classify air masses and derive back trajectories identifying potential sources. The research includes key developments at the instrumental, data processing and data visualization level to create user-friendly data layers that can be interrogated on a Google Earth^TM platform. These techniques will be developed and optimized in a laboratory setting using constructed air samples, and then applied during mobile field campaigns in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley and on Vancouver Island. The project’s mobile MIMS measurements may assist in local and regional airshed management plans by helping identify conditions leading to the formation and dispersal of air toxics.

Project leader: Hans D. Osthoff

The objective of this project is to investigate the ozone depletion events (ODEs) at Amphitrite Point on the coast of West Vancouver Island, as an improved understanding of the ODE phenomenon is relevant for management of ozone and aerosol formation downwind, such as in the greater Vancouver area.

The University of Calgary's mobile laboratory will be deployed for a three-week intensive campaign from July to August 2015 to quantify mixing ratios of biogenic hydrocarbons (isoprene, monoterpenes and selected oxidation products) by gas chromatography - ion trap mass spectrometry (GC-ITMS) of molecular halogen species by chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) and by cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy (CEAS). Dr. Osthoff and his graduate students will analyze the data set and publish the results in a peer-reviewed atmospheric chemistry journal.

This project will improve the fundamental understanding of chemical processes that influence the abundance of ozone in the marine boundary layer off Vancouver Island, namely the titration of ozone by biogenic hydrocarbons and catalytic cycles involving reactive halogens. This new data set will help improve photochemical models and air quality forecasting ability.

Read the final report.

Project leader: Michael Koehle

The project objectives are to investigate the effects of short-duration diesel exhaust-exposure during exercise on respiratory function and to assess the effects of IBA (Inhaled Beta Agonist, or commonly known as an inhaler) use in the treatment of respiratory symptoms and impaired lung function due to diesel exhaust-exposure immediately following inhalation and two hours following inhalation, when the “bronchodilating” (the opening up of lung passageways) effects of IBA and exercise begin to wear off.

In a double-blind, randomly-assigned, repeated-measures crossover design, twenty asthmatics exercised on a stationary bicycle while breathing either filtered air or diesel exhaust following the inhalation of either a placebo (air) or IBAs. Asthmatics were exposed to the four exposure conditions (filtered air - IBAs, filtered air - placebo, diesel exhaust - IBAs, diesel exhaust - placebo) and performed a 30-min constant workload exercise test at 50% of peak cycling resistance achieved on the screening day on a cycle ergometer.

Based on preliminary findings, the research team has concluded that breathing increased levels of diesel exhaust during submaximal cycling may reduce the bronchodilatory response to exercise in asthmatics with no corresponding sensory consequences. An addition project result showed that thirty minutes of submaximal, constant-intensity cycling exercise appears to positively affect inhibitory control, attention and information processing speed, even when breathing increased levels of diesel exhaust.

Project leader: Rebecca Abernethy

The objective of this project is to provide a replicable framework and set of tools for assessing open burning practices in the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) and to present novel options for reducing emissions and associated negative impacts from these practices in the FVRD. This project will quantify what is being burned, by whom and why (through development and execution of surveying and other methods) and what the impact is on air emissions and ambient air quality (including the development of a simple tool to project impacts from future potential open burns). It will specify novel best management practices and policy options for reducing open burning prevalence and its impact. This work may also identify and address gaps in the existing Provincial Open Burning and Smoke Control Regulation and address issues specific to this region.

This research project will significantly benefit not only the FVRD, but also other communities. It will do so through its replicable methodology, tools for assessing open burning situations, recommendations for best management practices, and policy options to reduce impacts from open burning.

Read the final report.