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Health unit not told of high Merrifield smog reading?

When Bill O’Donnell, public health program manager at the Algoma Health Unit, looked out his office window a little after 10 a.m. today, he immediately placed a call to provincial environment officials.
AlgomaSteelGreen

When Bill O’Donnell, public health program manager at the Algoma Health Unit, looked out his office window a little after 10 a.m. today, he immediately placed a call to provincial environment officials.

"From here at the Civic Centre, I could only see half of the steel mill," O'Donnell tells SooToday.com.

The waterfront, west end and downtown were all shrouded in an unusually thick haze.

Alerted to the situation by our readers, and able to monitor the atmospheric conditions from our own window at the Soo Centre on March Street, SooToday.com started working the phones.

Bruce Cave, a senior environmental officer with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, told us that Algoma Steel Inc. was asked today to report on any operations that could have elevated levels of fine solid or liquid particles in the air.

"We're not aware of any abnormal activity that could contribute to high particulate levels," Algoma Steel spokesperson Brenda Stenta told SooToday.com tonight.

High reading wasn't disclosed to health unit

Cave told SooToday.com that the Air Quality Index at a monitoring station at Wm. Merrifield Public School reached a surprisingly high 150 at 10 a.m.

The province starts issuing smog advisories when AQI levels reach 50.

Interestingly, when Bill O’Donnell was briefed later by ministry staff, he was told only that the AQI at Merrifield had reached 68 at 11 a.m..

O'Donnell insists he was not advised of the 150 reading an hour earlier, and learned of it only through SooToday.com.

Bruce Cave, meanwhile, says it's believed that a thermal inversion occurred today.

Temperature inversion

That's when a mass of cold air is trapped underneath a mass of warmer air.

Because the air can't citculate, pollution originating at the planet's surface can't escape.

So smog builds up and air quality decreases.

In April of this year, Mayor John Rowswell took offense to an article in the Sault Star that claimed that high particulate levels on one day that month had given the Sault the worst air quality in Ontario.

The Sault's AQI of 99 that day was "totally out of character," the mayor insisted to SooToday.com.

Roofing project

That reading was recorded at the J wing at Sault College, where the local monitoring station had been moved after repeated bad readings at the Merrifield site caused by a local resident burning brush or lighting up a box stove.

On that day, there was a temperature inversion compounded by a local business being re-roofed just upwind of Sault College, Rowswell said.

So the reading was highly localized and was in no way typical for Sault Ste. Marie.

The problem wasn't with the Sault's air quality, the mayor told us.

The problem, be argued, was with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment's monitoring methods.

Local incident

"It was not the entire city. It was a local incident."

Today, SooToday.com reeceived numerous calls, E-mails and feedback from readers who wanted to know the source of the dirty haze shrouding much of the City around 10 a.m.

When we called Bruce Cave, he said he could clearly see the problem from his office window in the ASCU Community Credit Union building at 289 Bay Street.

The ministry's investigation into today's filthy haze continues.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The image at the top of this page is one of several stock photographs used by SooToday.com to illustrate stories abput Algoma Steel. It does not depict today's environmental conditions.)


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David Helwig

About the Author: David Helwig

David Helwig's journalism career spans seven decades beginning in the 1960s. His work has been recognized with national and international awards.
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