This episode is sponsored by Lake Erie West Regional Council.
From a walk in the park to cruising altitude, ozone is all around us. It’s basically oxygen gas with one extra passenger of an atom, and that small addition has big effects around the world… literally.
The ozone layer helps shield us from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, absorbing a good 95% of harmful UV rays between 10-25 miles above our heads. There’s a constant interconversion going on up there, with those solar rays splitting O₂ gas into its separate atoms, which can then reattach to a different O₂ molecule to form O₃. The math shakes out to needing 3 oxygen gas molecules to form two ozone molecules.
In the 1980s, we found that “chlorofluorocarbons” or “CFCs” found in refrigerants and other things, were getting into that ozone layer. The Sun strips off a chlorine atom, which eventually breaks O₃ back down into O₂… eroding a big hole in that natural protective shell. It took one of the most successful examples of international cooperation ever to phase out CFCs, and the ozone layer is now on track for a full recovery to pre-1980s levels.
Ground-level ozone is another matter. We’re back with Tiara Gonzalez from Lake Erie West Regional Council in Toledo, explaining the key ingredient that most of us produce: “When we’re talking about the individual, a lot of times that’s going to be your car,” she points out. “When you’re running your car, your engine is burning fuel, it’s combusting the fuel. You’re releasing that particulate matter, and you’re also releasing volatile organic compounds, oftentimes referred to as VOCs. Once they’re released into the atmosphere, they can be broken down with sunlight and they form ozone.”
The last bit sounds familiar, but those compounds have a different impact at the surface compared to the stratosphere. Nitrogen oxide gases have their own oxygen atoms to contribute. Strip one off, it forms O₃, and then that NO can take another atom on and keep cycling through the process with a constant source. Other VOCs and hydrocarbons can interact with hydroxyl radicals, or “OH^–” molecules, and continue spurring on change.
That elemental miasma creates a host of health problems: lung inflammation, asthma aggravation, throat irritation… the list goes on. It can also be made worse by more intense sunlight and temperature: “When it’s warmer, you have more of those pollutants being formed or being released. We would tend to see that on the hottest days, or if there’s a really stagnant day.”
One challenge with tracking local ozone levels is keeping it local. Gonzalez points out we’ve had air quality stations for decades, but not enough in many cities to track it at the neighborhood level: “If you live, say, in South Toledo, and the closest monitor is North Toledo, you may not be having the exact same air quality just because it can differ so much.”
Another limitation: height difference. When meteorologists tell you the temperature outside, they’re often going off a station mounted 2 meters, or about 6 feet above ground level; air quality monitors are typically higher up. “Most people are between 5-6 feet,” Gonzalez offers, “and when those monitors are 20+ feet, they may not be getting the exact same level of pollution and air quality as you would at the ground level.”
That’s where she hopes the “My Community Air” project will fill the gap, with small sensors up for purchase to be placed at any home or office, and a Lake Erie West goal of 40 sensors to start. Similar projects have gotten off the ground nationwide, from near roadsides to national parks.
All of this to say: ozone up there, good; ozone down here, bad. Carpooling, using public transportation where available, even refueling your own vehicle after dark can help reduce ozone just a little at a time.
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