Introduction

Air pollution and Air pollution management was the basis of laboratory experiment 2. This
experiment was conducted using information obtained from the Maricopa County analyzing several
locations in and out of the Phoenix area, located in Arizona USA. Air pollution can be described as
pollutants of different constituents released into the atmosphere, these pollutants are toxic and
dangerous towards human health. In most simple terms air pollution is caused when smoke is
emitted from stationery sources such as factories and coal power plants. Since air pollution is
difficult to physically contain these substances, it is broken down into 2 different pollutants, primary
and secondary pollutants. Primary pollutants are pollutants that has been dispersed into the
atmosphere from local sources e.g. carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide, these
pollutants tend to react through a chemical reaction to produce secondary pollutants such as ozone
and nitric acid. There are several factors that further affect air pollution and quality, and these
include wind speed, wind direction and atmospheric pressure.

Air Quality can be classified as the measure with which a location's air is free of pollution (how much
the air in a specific spot is without contamination). The quality of air decreases due to several factors
such as stationery sources (powerplants) and mobile sources (cars) as previously mentioned with
relation to air pollution. Air quality is affected by air pollution, as the levels of air pollution increase,
the quality of air degrades due to this increase. Hence having a proportional relationship. Air quality
is measured with respect to the air quality index (AQI). This measure is based on constituents such as
ozone, carbon monoxide, particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM10). Different countries use different
methods to measure air quality but follow the same principle to help eradicate air pollution. One of
these principles is having to decrease certain pollutant levels, these pollutants include ozone,
nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead.

Summary

The information used in this lab was provided by analyzing the data found from the Maricopa
website. This website provided data on several locations located in and around the Phoenix area.
The aim of this experiment was to analyze current day air quality data from areas throughout the
Phoenix area and use these values to be compared to ambient air quality standards. This is done by
comparing the highest and lowest values, patterns and trends per location recorded with the
National Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Certain parameters were recorded and compared, these
parameters included Pm10, Pm2.5, NOx, CO and 03. All data found can be found in the appendix
section of this lab. It was found that…

Objectives

The objectives of this experiment were to compare values accessed on the Maricopa website. These
values were related to the air quality index data for the Phoenix area, thereafter these values were
compared to National Air Quality Standards of USA. The secondary objective was to determine any
trends and patterns between these different locations for different parameters such as time of day
with respect to Pm10, Pm2.5, NOx, CO and 03, wind speed and direction.