Atlanta leads the nation today in air quality—that is to say that it’s ozone forecast for today exceeds all other cities in the nation.  As shown in the AirNow map below, most of the Eastern part of the nation is in the moderate to USG ozone levels.  Moderate AQI (Air quality index) is 51 – 100. Air quality is acceptable; however, for some pollutants there may be a moderate health concern for a very small number of people. For example, people who are unusually sensitive to ozone may experience respiratory symptoms.

UGS (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) AQI is 101 – 150. Although general public is not likely to be affected at this AQI range, people with lung disease, older adults and children are at a greater risk from exposure to ozone, whereas persons with heart and lung disease, older adults and children are at greater risk from the presence of particles in the air.

Several years ago, Gary Short, founder and owner of Vistanomics, worked out a way to measure ground level ozone.  He invented a chemical strip which changes color in the presence of ozone, and named the device the EcoBadge.  EcoBadge because he devised a clip on badge in which you could insert an ozone paper strip, and then could clip it on to your shirt or blouse, and be a walking ozone monitor.  I’ve included a picture of the ecobadge, and picture of the ozone monitoring strip.

The Ecobadge: A device used to measure the amount of ground-level ozone in the air. A chemically sensitive strip is inserted into the badge, and then exposed to the air for 1 hour (the pink area), and 8 hours (the brown area).

At the same time I was working with American and Russian science educators on a global environmental project in which students monitored and researched local environmental problems, and then shared their findings on the Internet at a website that we had designed.  The project was known as the Global Thinking Project.

As part of my current work, and in conjunction with the release of my new book, Science as Inquiry, several environmental projects have been developed, published in the book, and also available on the Internet.  One of the projects is Project Ozone.  Project ozone uses the tools developed by Gary Short at Vistanomics, as well as other meteorology instruments to measure other parameters important when studying ozone.

If you are working this summer with middle or high school students, or students at the college level, you might be interested taking a look at Project Ozone to see if the it might be a project you might want to include in your course or program.

Screen shot of Project Ozone Homepage. Links for activities, data sharing and retrieval.