State and Local Air Monitoring

In addition to fulfilling the in-house requirements for quality control, state and local air monitoring networks which are collecting data for compliance purposes are required to have an external performance audit on an annual basis. Under this program, an independent organization supplies externally calibrated sources of air pollutant gases to be measured by the instrumentation undergoing audit. An audit report summarizes the performance of the instruments. If necessary, further action must be taken to eliminate any major discrepancies between the internal and external calibration results. 

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40, Part 58, Ambient Air Quality Surveillance, Appendix D— Network Design for State and Local Air Monitoring Stations (SLAMS). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, July 1992, pp. 158-172. 

Ozone data collected by CASTNET are complementary to the larger ozone data sets gathered by the State and Local Air Monitoring Stations (SLAMS) and National Air Monitoring Stations (NAMS) networks. Most air-quality samples at SLAMS/NAMS sites are located in urban areas, while CASTNET sites are in rural locations. Hourly ozone measurements are taken at each of the 50 sites operated by EPA. Data from these sites provide information to help characterize ozone transport issues and ozone exposure levels. 

Two main networks are differentiated in the USA the state and local air monitoring stations (SUAMS) and the national air monitoring stations (NAMS). The two networks mainly differ in their requirements with respect to area of coverage with more, smaller-scale representative monitoring sites within the SLAMS. The objectives, primarily for SLAMS, as laid out in CFR 40 [13] are to ... 

Periodic performance audits are required to validate the accuracy of the air-monitoring system. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) requires that performance audits be conducted at least once a year for criteria pollutant analyzers operated at state and local air monitoring stations (SLAMS). The EPA recommends that each analyzer be disconnected from the monitoring station manifold and be individually connected to the audit, from which it will receive the audit gas of known concentration. The audit gas concentrations are usually generated in a van, using a gas calibrator to dilute multiblend gases with zero air. 

Precision and Accuracy Assessment for State and Local Air Monitoring Networks 1988... 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for protection of human health and welfare. These standards are defined in terms of concentration and hme span for a specific pollutant for example, the NAAQS for carbon monoxide is 9 ppmV for 8 hr, not to be exceeded more than once per year. For a state or local government to establish compliance with a National Ambient Air Quality Standard, measurements of the actual air quality must be made. To obtain these measurements, state and local governments have established stationary monitoring networks with instrumentation complying with federal specifications, as discussed in Chapter 14. The results of these measurements determine whether a given location is violating the air quality standard. 

In accordance with the Statute of the State Inspectorate for Environmental Protection (SIEP), the Chief Inspector of SIEP plays the co-coordinative role within the State Environmental Monitoring Programme. The State Sanitary Inspectorate (SSI) is responsible for air quality assessment from the viewpoint of health and hygiene requirements. The authority responsible for official data on national emissions into air is the Department of Environmental Protection in the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry (MoE). Air quality monitoring data are used at national, voivodship (provincial) and local levels. 

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