By Mary Onishi
Forty miles-per-hour winds blew across the afternoon sky of a sepia-tinted Lubbock. For the drivers braving the low visibility and the pedestrians clutching their hats with squinted eyes and the residents peering out their windows glad to be inside, this is not an uncommon sight.
The dust storm that blew through Lubbock on April 10 was one of two this spring. The first one made its appearance a month before on March 13. Dr. Karin Ardon-Dryer listed these dates off the top of her head while sitting in her office chair. As an assistant professor of Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech University, she said she knows she is probably the only one in Lubbock who gets excited about dust storms.
Video of April 10 dust storm provided by Dr. Karin Ardon-Dryer.
For Ardon-Dryer, the April dust storm was a timely research opportunity that came soon after the atmospheric science group had constructed an air quality monitor that sits atop the electrical engineering building on campus. The monitor measures the concentration of particles in the air and captures them for analysis.
Her group is particularly interested in analyzing “PM 2.5” or particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers. Why does size matter?
“Because the smaller the particle, the deeper it can get,” she said. “Particles smaller than 2.5 can get into your lungs and even go into your bloodstream.”
And it’s not just dust, she emphasized.
“Dust, bacteria, sea salt, smoke, smog, viruses…” she said. “It’s everything that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers.”
Before the atmospheric science group’s air monitor went up at the end of March, there was only one other monitor in Lubbock of its caliber. Ardon-Dryer said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality owns the other monitor that was set up in the ‘90s.
In addition to these two monitors, five other PurpleAir sensors are scattered across the city, she said.
Environmental toxicologist, Dr. Philip Smith, said the PurpleAir program is sort of a citizen science program because anyone can purchase a monitor and install it. He said the monitors upload real-time data on air quality that anyone can view on their website map.
According to Michael Bates, attorney for Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, three of the PurpleAir sensors were installed at the end of February by East Lubbock residents. One is located in the Chatman Hill neighborhood, one in the Arnett Benson neighborhood and one southeast of Loop 289. He said the East Lubbock residents wanted to have the ability to monitor the air on their side of town since the majority of Lubbock’s industry is located there.
“This allows them to get continuous data that they can see for themselves without having to go through a government entity,” he shared.
Two or three more PurpleAir monitors should be going up next week, said Bates.
Dr. Smith said the PurpleAir monitor located in southwest Lubbock was installed by one of his colleagues at his home out of curiosity to see how the sensor worked. Smith also noted that, for some reason, the monitor located near Slide and 27th Street seems to always record higher readings of particle concentration.
Data collected from the PurpleAir website demonstrates the five sensors’ readings vary from each other and from the TCEQ monitor data, which records the day of April’s dust storm as the day with highest PM 2.5 reading. The PurpleAir monitors all record different days with the highest PM 2.5 readings.
Dr. Ardon-Dryer is currently researching the behavior of PurpleAir monitors located in Berkeley, California compared to the higher-end EPA monitors by comparing the data each is collecting.
“Sometimes they match, sometimes we see that the PurpleAir is overestimating,” she said.
Dr. Ardon-Dryer believes there is a possibility that large dust storms and long-term use can compromise the accuracy of the PurpleAir monitors. She thinks that is why the monitor near Slide and 27th Street has the most inconsistent readings -- it is the oldest monitor and has seen the most dust storms.
“We still don’t know how good they are, but I can say from what we are finding that they are not bad,” she said. “It’s definitely better to have them than to not have anything.”
Ardon-Dryer said it would be great if there were sensors all over town since air quality can change even block to block.
“Because having one sensor in a town doesn’t really represent [the whole town],” she explained.
While dust is a localized issue, it is also one that crosses borders. A Lubbock environmental investigator for the TCEQ, Sara Coley, said that on a really windy day, Lubbock can get dirt all the way from New Mexico.
“Any amount of large open field without any kind of vegetation – it’s going to contribute to the overall dirt in the air on a windy day,” she said.
Coley said the biggest problem Lubbock faces in terms of air quality is dust from agricultural activity.
Jason Adams, the Lubbock work leader for air and waste for the TCEQ, said he often gets complaints about agricultural dust blowing onto people’s properties but that there’s not really anything they can do about it.
“We can’t control all the dirt in the air,” he said.
Within the past five years, 29 complaints related to dust were filed through the TCEQ. The most recent case, which is still open, was filed on April 25 citing a complaint that a facility was emitting excessive dust.
Adams explained that, in the past, the Environmental Protection Agency has tried to push the city of Lubbock into “non-attainment” status in terms of regulation because of its higher levels of PM 2.5. However, after further investigation, the EPA recognized the level of particulate matter in the air was mostly due to the high level of agriculture combined with Lubbock’s weather conditions and determined to keep the city in “attainment” status.
“That is one thing we don’t regulate,” added Coley. “Agricultural fields, plowing fields, that kind of thing.”
Dr. Smith’s curiosity to research particles blowing from cattle feedyards was peaked one day while he was out duck hunting. He said he was downwind from a feedyard in Floyd County on a day when the ducks weren’t flying so he had time to sit and think about what was blowing onto him.
At the time, there was a research emphasis on chemicals in the environment that affect our endocrine systems, he said. He decided to conduct his own research as well. In 2018, he published a paper that demonstrated that antibiotic-resistant bacteria were blowing from feedlots in the Texas panhandle region.
Dr. Ardon-Dryer said she has observed biological material on the particles she has been able to collect but is still uncertain what this could mean in terms of how it is affecting the health of people breathing it in. She hopes to find answers through the research she is currently conducting.
“We know that there’s a lot of health problems. We know that people have some issues with allergens,” she shared. “It could be the dust, it could be the fact that we have some agriculture…”
For the most part, there are still a lot of questions to be answered, according to Dr. Ardon-Dryer. One of those questions includes the state of Lubbock’s gas pollution, the second type of air pollution. She said that, as of now, Lubbock has never had any monitoring for gaseous pollutants.
The EPA website lists 16 facilities within city limits that are marked as “toxic release inventory” sites. According to the EPA, certain industries that manufacture, process, or use significant amounts of toxic chemicals are required to report annually on their releases of these chemicals.
Dr. Phil explained that these releases are important to track but that they are self-reported by the industries.
Bates said that he hopes to have a high-end gaseous air monitor installed in the near future in order to begin to analyze what is being released into our air, especially in the neighborhoods closest to industrial zoning.
Ardon-Dryer also said she is hoping for more monitors to be placed around town in order to better understand what exactly is blowing through the air in “the dustiest city in the U.S.”