Well before the wildfires in Canada impacted Wayne County, air quality was a significant concern.
“If the air keeps getting worse, it could mess all of us up,” Detroit resident Juanelys Domenech.
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans is making improving air quality a priority.
“Poor health indices have always been higher in Wayne County,” said Evans. “We rank last of 83 counties. A lot of that is environmental air pollution, environmental injustices that just never seem to get solved.”
The county is partnering with JustAir Solutions to install 100 air quality monitors in various locations.
The county will also hand out 500 mobile monitors to be attached to children’s backpacks along with censors for their inhalers.
“If we can get data about what air quality looks like every time a child uses their inhaler, we can learn the fingerprint of asthma here in our county,” said Wayne County Health Department Director Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Residents can sign up for air quality alerts in specific areas.
“What we have seen already in our data in our work, not only here in Detroit, but beyond is that air quality can differ greatly from block to block, from community to community, to neighborhood to neighborhood,” said JustAir Solutions Co-founder and CEO Darren Riley.
For Riley, his work is personal. He noticed a health change after moving to Detroit from out of state.
“I developed asthma five years ago,” Riley said. “I live in southwest Detroit, very close to a lot of heavy trucking industry, and me developing asthma as a long-term athlete was really critical.”
The Wayne County Community Air Quality Project is expected to occur over three years, from August 2023 through December 2026.
The project’s first phase is research, engagement, and planning, which will occur throughout the year.
The air quality monitors will be deployed early next year.
The final phase is monitoring and reporting, which will occur through December 2026.
