Air Quality Sensors Provide Environmental Data to Palisadians

By Laurel Busby

News & Information Editor

For residents worried about air quality in Pacific Palisades, one way to get up-to-date pollution information is through the Community Action Project Los Angeles, an endeavor spearheaded by Canyon resident Saree Kayne and the R&S Kayne Foundation.

Saree Kayne, executive director of the R&S Kayne Foundation

The project has conducted air, soil, and water-quality tests throughout Pacific Palisades, including the Canyon. Currently, 18 QuantAQ air monitors are providing 24-hour air-quality data that is updated every five minutes on the project’s website. Two more sensors will eventually be added.

The monitors provide data on two levels of particulate matter—PM2.5 (less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) and PM10 (less than 10 micrometers in diameter). The data is then converted to a map format showing the current air quality (good, moderate, unhealthy for sensitive people, unhealthy, very unhealthy, or hazardous) in 18 locations in Pacific Palisades, including the mouth of the Canyon, near Rustic Canyon Park, the Alphabet Streets, the Highlands, and near the top of Temescal Canyon Road.

Caltech scientists first created a similar system for Altadena, and Kayne’s neighbor, Lauren Blum, told her about the effort. The two then worked with Dr. Victoria Danhakl and the Danhakl Family Foundation to do the same thing for the Palisades.

“We modeled ours after theirs, and Caltech scientists have been very collaborative with sharing best practices,” said Kayne, the executive director of the R&S Kayne foundation.

Researchers from UCLA, Purdue University, Cal Poly Pomona, and Loyola Marymount University are part of the Community Action Project Los Angeles’ team of experts, who are working to gain a comprehensive picture of the post-fire air, soil, and water pollution in both Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

“The big goal is to use the techniques and methods of high-quality academic research to answer every day people’s questions about how to safely and effectively recover from this,” Kayne said.

Thus far, the foundation has tested swimming pools for toxicity and also funded soil testing on an initial 1,200 properties (600 in the Palisades and 600 in Altadena). The organization is working to obtain additional funding to test 5,000 to 15,000 more properties, Kayne said. Preliminary results should be released in a newsletter this week.

In previous wildfires, FEMA conducted testing after properties were scraped by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that all contamination had been fully removed, Kayne said. The federal government has declined to conduct such tests after these fires.

“The post-soil testing is incredibly important, particularly in the aftermath of the scraping when there are piles of dust that can be swept up in the wind,” Kayne said. “Are our kids safe to be playing in the dirt and making mud kitchens?”

After other fires, more than a quarter of properties “failed to meet contamination thresholds” after the lots had been scraped, Kayne noted.

Kayne, who has three young children with her husband Michael Gregory, a Canyon native, initiated the foundation’s efforts in part because she found herself unable to find adequate resources for her environmental concerns after the fire.

“We’re trying to fill the informational vacuums that started when the fires happened,” Kayne said. “We still hope the city, county, state, and federal governments change their minds and start doing the testing that has happened in every fire prior to this. We would like to partner with them or pass the baton back to them…. It’s the role and responsibility of the government.”

This environmental work is a new venture for the R&S Kayne Foundation, which is named for Kayne’s parents, Ric and Suzanne, who began the foundation in 1987, the year their daughter was born. Previously, its work included assisting first-generation and low-income students with college pathways and economic empowerment, Kayne said.

However, this new effort to assist Palisadians and Altadena residents in their efforts to understand the post-fire world has been particularly personal to Kayne, and she anticipates that the work will benefit other communities as well. For example, the project plans to create a “disaster recovery playbook” that can help communities that encounter massive disasters in the future.

“Everyone [at CAP.LA] shares the goal of helping the community and future communities who find themselves in this position,” said Kayne, who grew up in Santa Monica. “It’s a big, exciting project. I feel super privileged to work with this group of scientists. It’s some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.”

For more information or to donate to CAP.LA, visit the website—www.cap.la.