JR Diaz-Hernandez - Did You Breathe Air Today?

[00:00:05] Christy: Welcome to green champions. 

[00:00:06] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:10] Christy: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Christy. 

[00:00:16] Dominique: And I'm Dominique. 

[00:00:17] Christy: Today, we're continuing our miniseries with the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC. We're highlighting their initiatives driving sustainability across central Ohio, and we're promoting MORPC's annual Summit on Sustainability that's just around the corner. 

[00:00:30] Dominique: We're back with JR Diaz-Hernandez, who serves as the air quality and sustainability program manager at MORPC. JR works to protect public health and improve air quality across Central Ohio through 

forecasting alerts and neighborhood level air monitoring. And this episode in particular, we are exploring JR's work with MORPC and the connection between air quality, climate change, and public health. So thanks JR for coming back and having this conversation with us.

[00:00:53] JR: Yeah. Thanks for having me back. 

[00:00:54] Christy: In our last conversation, JR, I was just so impressed by how much you care for people and also how you're so inquisitive and are interested in understanding how things work. So, kick us off. Tell us about your role, JR. 

[00:01:09] JR: Yeah, absolutely. I know the title Air Quality and Sustainability Program Manager is kinda big, right? So I try to divide up the work that I do into three buckets. They're the buckets that we've already touched on. So number one is forecasting and alerts, and we'll get into that in a second.

Number two is the neighborhood level, air sensor project or the Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network, or CLEAN, and sort of the continuation of that work. That's bucket two. And then, bucket three is sustainability. How does it interact with all of the other great programs that we have at MORPC?

How can I support the work that some of my colleagues are doing? How can I support the work that folks outside of the organization are doing? We have so many great organizations, Green Columbus, Green Champions, green everything. So how can we work together to make sure that we're furthering the aims of each one of our work?

[00:01:54] Christy: I love it. Well, maybe we can kick it off by talking about the forecasting and alerts a bit. Number one, why don't you tell us what are they? How are the community hearing about these? And overall, how does it help protect 

communities? 

[00:02:07] JR: Yeah. So what we do, bucket number one, air quality forecasting and alerts. We work with our forecasters, Spheros Environmental based out of Sonoma, California, and they help us come up with these air quality forecasts, I'll give a bit of background information. So the EPI, AEPA, uses this scale called the Air Quality Index.

It kinda looks like a thermometer. It starts at green. Green is good air quality. Yellow is moderate air quality. Orange is when it starts getting into the unhealthy for sensitive groups, which can include younger kids, older adults, people with asthma, people with cardiac lung issues.

Red is when it starts to get unhealthy for everyone. Purple is when it starts to get really unhealthy, and maroon is hazardous. So we use that scale. There's numbers associated with those scales. The lower the number, the better the air quality. 

And JR, what's that scale. You said lower is better, but that's like a zero. What's like a maroon?

Yeah, yeah. So we will never reach zero. There will always at least be one, right? Zero is like you're in a vacuum. But, I, I always think we should just do it from one to 500. So 500 is the highest level. So anything below 100 on the AQI scale is green and yellow. So green is zero to 50, 51 to 100 is yellow. we tend to stick to those levels here in Central Ohio.

[00:03:21] Dominique: And are most folks accessing that through their local weather app or weather service? And then that number is informed by folks like you? How does that relationship work? 

[00:03:28] JR: Yeah. at any point in time, you can access the close to live number at airnow.gov. So that is the website where you could actually type in your specific ZIP code and it'll tell you what the air quality is there. That's a program through the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA.

If you're looking at your phone, you absolutely can pull out your weather app. Depending on the app, it'll be exactly what you see off of AirNow or it might be a proprietary method that they use to combine data between the EPA regulatory monitors and sensors. We tend not to do that here.

It's truthfully a bit of bad science to try and mix together monitor regulatory grade data with sensor data, which isn't as stringent in quality tested as the EPA monitors. But you can definitely access it through airnow.gov or just looking at your weather app.

[00:04:15] Dominique: That's awesome. I'm just curious, How does air quality get managed on a global scale? Is this 

[00:04:21] JR: different from country to country? Do you have any context for the history of air quality? Yeah. So we use the EPA scale, which is different than the World Health Organization scale. They have a bit more stringent requirements, A lot of different countries have a lot of different scales. Again, we happen to be in the US. We're using the EPA scale that has been tested over decades.

And, actually part of the history, thanks to Ohio, is why we started doing this. folks in the crowd may remember when the Cuyahoga River was on fire, right? So a lot of the environmental protections that we have enacted in water quality and air quality were precisely because we wanted to make sure that things like that don't happen again. So, a very brief history there.

[00:04:57] Dominique: And also this is an international problem. I'm thinking right now we're talking about the work that you do at MORPC, located in central Ohio, and just the same summer we felt the impacts from the Canadian wildfires, and this was very topical. You walked outside and it felt so clear that your air quality was not the same.

It was foggy and it smelled like there was bonfires happening around us at every corner. And I'm sure this has been, maybe a stressful time for you. I don't know. Tell us about that. How did that period of time maybe pressure test the alert system you've been working on? 

[00:05:28] JR: Yeah. So, again, our alerts go out when it's that orange level or above. We happen to issue forecasts just for the four county region within Central Ohio, so Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, and Licking. 

What we saw specific to when we saw those big wildfires, and a couple important things to keep in mind here is, number one, wildfires don't recognize borders or boundaries or streets or anything like that, right?

we get a lot of talk of things happening in Canada or the American West or somewhere else outside of here. For the most part, Central Ohio is doing a really good job at actually improving the air quality. If you look at the trend line over, let's say, the last 25 years, you actually see the number of green or good air quality days increasing, and then some moderate or yellow level days.

And then starting in 2023, we saw those numbers start to go down a little bit. And if anybody can recall what happened in 2023, another day where you walked outside and everything looked really hazy because that was wildfire smoke coming in from other parts of the US and from Canada. So what we saw on those days, I believe the worst day that we had in recorded air quality history in Central Ohio was July 17th, 2026.

That is the day, Dominique, as you had said, you walked outside. it hurt to breathe. If you weren't wearing eye protection, I went out to walk my dog. If it felt so bad, I had a mask on and I was like, "We gotta make this quick." "We cannot spend any time out here." My eyes were watering.

But we did reach that incredibly high red level day. It was bad for everyone. 

[00:06:54] Dominique: Yeah. 

I think you're leading into a good point I remember that and I remember wondering like, what are we supposed to do, transparently? What advice would you give listeners for protecting themselves as an expert in this field when these air quality 

occurrences happen, where we're feeling the impacts of maybe neighboring countries or neighboring states and reaching unhealthy levels of air quality? 

[00:07:12] JR: Yeah. So we'll start towards the bottom of the scale, right? The yellow and the orange. once our alerts 

start going out, and our alerts go out by email mostly. People can sign up for it. Again, if you go to morpc.org/airquality, you can sign up for our alerts there. But one of the great partnerships that we have is with the National Weather Service office in Wilmington.

So even if we don't have, your direct email, if your weather app has ever popped up and it said bad air quality day, that's the work that myself and our forecasters at our National Weather Service did to try and get the information out to users within the four county region to get that information.

So we will still send out the alerts no matter what. Once that orange level or higher alert is triggered, for the most part, again, in central Ohio, we have seen those orange level days, right? It typically doesn't get much higher than that.

Folks who have health issues tend to already know what to do in cases like this, so we always encourage people, if you don't already have one, say, your asthma action plan. I know especially those pollutants could trigger asthma attacks. We just wanna make sure that people have their inhalers, that they have their emergency contacts, that they know what they're supposed to be doing.

Once it starts to get to those higher levels, that's truthfully one of those areas that we weren't expecting it to get that high. Some of the health guidance we had to grab from our colleagues in Minnesota, who were experiencing wildfires and our partners up in Canada who were experiencing wildfires.

So they have great messaging that includes, using an N95 or a KN95 mask. So if you do need to go outside on those, again, really poor air quality days, making sure that you're protecting yourself, limiting the amount of time that you spend outside. I saw people biking and running and driving with their windows down and it was very interesting to me that I'm not sure if the messaging got tocertain people.

But you know, try to avoid, again, on really bad air quality days, driving with your windows down, just put them back up. We got to the levels where it was getting to please just stay inside. Stay inside. If you have an air filter, please run your air filter and limit the amount of time you spend outside. If you have to take your dog out, make it as quick as possible. And again, that was something that we hadn't experienced.

We're not in the business of telling folks to stay inside. We don't have any enforcement capacity. We just have the opportunity to inform. So I'm hoping people were looking at that and saying, "Okay, maybe I should be

doing this."

[00:09:19] Christy: Yeah, that makes sense. And I thank you for the work that you're doing in that area because we all need to be aware of it, and sometimes we can't just step outside and see it visually, so it's really important. Another initiative that you're doing though is the Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network or CLEAN.

What is that? Help us understand how you're helping 

communities.

[00:09:40] JR: Yeah. So that was an initiative that our team got funding for through the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. What we were finding was a number of residents were saying, "Hey, even though EPA is saying that it's a green level day or a good air quality day, I know that my neighborhood experiences things a little bit differently."

So we wanted to make sure that we were responding to resident concerns, and seeing if there was anything going on within those neighborhoods. So what we did was with funding from the EPA, we purchased a suite of air sensors to put out into the community. So these air sensors are wonderful.

They are easily portable, roughly the size of a baseball, smaller than a softball. They just need Wi-Fi and an electrical outlet to work. What's great about them, you can see, all of our information is public, by the way. So if you go to purpleair.com/map and look in the Columbus region, all of our sensors are labeled MORPC underscore and then a number.

So you'll see our sensors and our sensor data available online. 

[00:10:35] Dominique: And what was that link one more time?

[00:10:36] JR: Yeah, sure. That's purpleair.com/map. we put those sensors out in different communities. There are certain communities that are saying they experience air pollution burdens greater than other communities, and unfortunately, that's, true.

We've seen a history of environmental racism, not just within Franklin County, but, throughout the United States. Why are certain communities located next to, say, polluting industries where others, have large tree canopy and are away from all of these things?we worked with a number of communities to get sensors out to try and better understand that neighborhood by neighborhood, kind of block by block air pollution.

That was a three-year effort. We actually wrapped that up earlier this year. However, wrap up does not mean that we're taking down all of our sensors. The sensors are still out. They're still collecting data. We are still continuing the work just because of how valuable it is.

[00:11:23] Dominique: No, that's awesome. I think that one, this feels connected for me. I do a lot of work as a volunteer with Green Columbus. And the focus of that nonprofit is around increasing tree canopy coverage in an equitable fashion so that what you're saying, we talk about canopy coverage from a heat point of view, but there's so much need for trees in communities because of the way it impacts air quality.

 I'm so glad you've done this Clean Initiative. I'm curious just tounderstand how you got here, 'cause part of the Green Champions mission is I want folks who listen to be able to potentially apply what you're doing elsewhere. Can you share a bit of how that initiative was funded, or at least how the initiative was 

born in terms of what drove the interest, and maybe how you just got the right yeses to put up those sensors?

[00:12:07] JR: Yeah. yeah. So I'll try to wrap up this history as quickly as I can. But, the initial impetus of this project actually began near COVID. So this was before I joined the team, but it was a partnership between MORPC and Franklin County Public Health, or FCPH, 'cause they were noticing, different COVID outcomes, right?

And community members were pointing this out. So there was a smaller grant through the Thriving Earth Exchange, or TEX, that helped fund smaller number of sensors for a shorter amount of time. There was a lot that we learned from there, from something basic as place sensor here and not here.

why is it important to do that? We used all of that information to then apply to the EPA's STAR grant and that's what initially provided the funding for our team and additional equipment to put sensors out in the field. I happened to join right after the rest of the team, our wonderful data folks and Brandi Whetstone, and, after they had already gotten the grant.

So I stepped in to be the point person for all of that. So that's where all of that came from.

[00:12:59] Dominique: No, that's really helpful. And knowing who had those initiatives I think is really helpful to think about, like what are critical organizations to saying yes and having buy-in. 

thank you for that context 'cause I want more organizations to see their role in moving the needle along for stuff like this. 

[00:13:14] JR: Yeah. And I should add for any listeners, so one of the outcomes of that project was applying everything that we took from those projects all the lessons learned, everything that, we found useful. And the next iteration of this project will actually be finalizing our community air sensor workbook.

So we wanna make sure if anybody ever does wanna do this, we give you a step-by-step guide. Number one, what is it that you wanna do? What sensor are you looking for? here are templates for data collection. Here's where you should be placing them. So as of, August 18th is when we're recording this right now, we should be finalizing that workbook by the end of the month.

And our next step is actually to package some of the additional sensors that we have with this workbook to create a sensor lending library. So now that we've learned a lot about what's happening within Franklin County, within pockets of Columbus, we wanna make sure MORPC's reach is fairly wide, right?

We cover a 15 county region. We wanna make sure that now we've taken what we've learned here and allowed folks who live maybe in a community within Franklin County that we haven't gotten to or outside of Franklin County to take this suite of sensors, this package of sensors, this workbook, and go step by step into figuring out what they wanna do, what they wanna monitor, how is it gonna help them. So stay tuned. We're hoping to have that program up and running by the end of the year.

[00:14:25] Christy: JR, you mentioned a lot about certain people or communities may be more at risk and that's part of why you were able to get the sensors and do the analysis and now you have some information. And yes, you're looking at how can we share that process with other communities so they can replicate it and get that data.

How though will that data be enacted by MORPC and what can communities expect? And maybe that's jumping ahead a little bit 'cause I know this project just closed, but you're going to do something with this information. Tell us more about that?

[00:14:56] JR: Project is officially closed, but again, the work is important that people wanna hear more about. I've done sensor installs in like the last three weeks. People keep wanting to see the network expanding, so it's still going on. But, the question of well, what's next, now that we have this information. So on our end, we do have terabytes of data of having worked with our consultant to better understand pollution risks, specifically particulate matter pollution within Franklin County, and highlighting communities that experience the higher burden of particulate matter pollution than others.

And, what are we doing with that now? So number one, we were actually able to zero in a very specific part of Franklin County that almost always has roughly double to triple to quadruple the amount of particulate matter pollution than the rest of the county. However, our air sensors weren't really reaching that area.

So trying to work with them to get additional monitoring out. Maybe it was something based off the models that was wrong. It could be that it was incorrect, So highlighting that community, trying to get more sensors into, that community.

Number two, that information is useful to understand cyclical patterns, right? So if there's something that's always happening at roughly 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM in certain communities, we can probably try to tie that to like traffic, It happens, unfortunately, if traffic picks up at those time, right?

Beginning of the workday, end of the workday. But there were instances where, say, we saw something start spiking at 3:00 AM. 

There's probably not as much traffic at that time. So what does it mean for folks who are picking up these spikes at 3:00 AM or, at odd times? So working with them and using it, I think the data and the sensors at the end of the day are like empowerment tools.

We're gonna take this data, we're putting it into a digestible format. We're giving it to each one of our specific site hosts saying, "Hey, here's what we noticed. If it was this day or this time where we normally saw higher or lower readings, let's try to figure out what's going on." As I mentioned before, we're not an enforcement agency.

We're not the EPA. However, if we're noticing massive spikes, And there happens to be sources in the area, that might be something that the resident can then use to take to, say, the Ohio EPA or the EPA and saying, "Here's something I'm noticing. Can you help us figure it out?" So again, just tools for empowerment, additional information, and trying to get that information into the hands of the right people.

Community members our wonderful community organizations, neighborhood associations are great. The more people we can inform about some of the patterns that we notice, the better.

[00:17:12] Dominique: Yeah, this seems like such a collaborative problem-solving process because I can only imagine, just thinking of even one-off things. I mean, you're dealing with traffic, businesses, residents. 

I imagine if a festival takes place in a location with a lot of generators and things can pop up in a community that's not always there, that if you weren't plugged in to what's happening in that community, you might misattribute that to something else. Is that a fair mental picture of the moving pieces that you now have to think about when you're trying to see all these patterns? 

[00:17:43] JR: it's absolutely fair. We work with some great partners in, I'll use Bexley as an example. They had a ticket pickup for their 4th of July festival. There happened to be a sensor outside of their city hall. So they wanted to know, "Hey, did we see any changes to that as we saw an increase of traffic?"

And, we did. We did see those traffic peaks when they had the ticket pickup open. We did see there were some folks who were idling from our public safety team. They were there all night. We saw those numbers pick up. So we're picking up on these different happenings. And, Dominique, as you said, the more we know about was it a festival?

Was it somebody left their truck running while they ran inside they forgot their lunch, they had to come back? Or are we seeing other items happening that are outside of the human control? Is it environment? Is it point source? Is it a factory? Still that was the aim of the project in trying to figure all that out.

[00:18:31] Dominique: No, that's awesome to understand and it adds so much color to the complexity of this issue. You need input from so many people to really problem solve. What are other ways individuals can help reduce air pollution or do the right thing in their community?

What power do I have sitting here right now?

[00:18:49] JR: Yeah. Wonderful question. we have been seeing more places adopt work from home policies, The easiest way to prevent pollution is to just not have pollution, not start it in the first place. So if you could avoid running your vehicle, that's great. If you have to run your vehicle, consider carpooling.

We have a wonderful program, the Gohio Commute program. Emily Brown is our point of contact there. If you're thinking of "Hey, I wanna carpool. I don't know how to do it," reach out to Gohio. They will connect you with other resources, even help you put together like a van pool for your workplace.

our trail system in central Ohio is pretty good, I bike to work a number of times. I've seen people biking to work. So if that's something that you are capable of doing and have the opportunity to do, biking is a wonderful way, again, of reducing pollution.

Also helps you get some exercise. I benefited from getting a bit of exercise in the morning and the evening. You can try it if it's within your means, right? We have these gas lawnmower exchange programs that happen every year. So switching out your gas lawnmower equipment or lawnmower for electric or a battery-powered one.

We've seen folks who are fully converting to, say, solar power or alternative energies. There's so much you can do within the scale of if you have the additional funds to solarize your home, wonderful. If you decide, "Hey, today, instead of driving to the store, I'm gonna just walk and take my tote bag with me," that's great too.

It's not just the big actions, right? It's the little actions. So whatever you can do within your means, we're all in this together, I'm not advocating for everybody to go out and take a loan and put solar panels on your house. If that's what you wanna do, wonderful. If you just wanna bike to work, if you just wanna walk to the store, if you wanna carpool, if you wanna see if you could work from home, those are all wonderful solutions as well.

[00:20:21] Christy: Thank you for helping our listeners understand actions they can take. You mentioned several resources along the way in our conversation. Can you maybe just share that again just in case 

anybody missed it? 

'Cause we wanna make sure where people can 

go 

[00:20:36] JR: Yeah. So, number one, I believe couple minutes ago I mentioned, if you wanna access any of our sensor data, purpleair.com/map. If you're like, "Hey, I'm curious about a day that isn't recorded here," reach out to myself. You can reach me at airquality@morpc.org. Another resource that I mentioned was the Gohio Commute program.

So if you go to MORPC, look under Programs, I believe it's morpc.org/gohio, and if not, you can look at our program list. It should be listed there. I mentioned airnow.gov. That is where you can see your live air quality reading based off of your ZIP Code. 

 another great program that MORPC has is our housing and residential services. So there are income requirements for that, but, one of the greatest things you can do for your home is check to see if it's weatherized, if your equipment is running properly.

So another wonderful group of people that go out and, again, if you fall within the income requirements, they will help you weatherize your home. They will help you update some of your water heaters, your window sealant, items like that, right? 'Cause if you're running your AC but there's still hot air coming in, you're wasting energy.

So another great way of conserving energy and ensuring that your equipment's not working harder than it needs to, that is the Home Weatherization Services program at MORPC.

[00:21:45] Dominique: Perfect. And while we're in the swing of plugging resources, JR, what are best ways to connect with you specifically? 

[00:21:51] JR: Yeah. So you can find our program updates on morpc.org/airquality. I'll give you the general email that I monitor. That's airquality@morpc.org. I'm trying to get better, as we all are, of course, but, I'm trying to do more information and quick things on LinkedIn as well.

So if anybody's ever wondering about their air quality, I will do my best to connect on there, and you can find me. J.R. Diaz-Hernandez is my name.

[00:22:15] Dominique: Perfect. And I'm really happy you mentioned, so many actions we can take, but also you mentioned trails. In our next episode, we're gonna be shifting gears into talking about what MORPC's doing around our greenways, and why that's really important. So thank you for that very natural but real plug for our next topic.

Last question for you here before we wrap up is looking ahead, and thinking about the programs and initiatives that you have on the horizon, what are you looking to continue improving when it comes to air quality and the connection with public health?

[00:22:44] JR: Yeah, that's a big question. As I mentioned previously, there are so many actions we could take that at the end of the day improve air quality even if it's not at the forefront of the reason why we're enacting them. So I know there is a push to expand electric vehicle charging, 

If people are interested in electric vehicle but, they have nowhere to charge it, it'd be great to have those chargers available. We have the LinkUS initiative that's really kicking off. We're building those bus rapid transit corridors. That'll be a wonderful way of ensuring reliable transportation within those corridors.

And again, if you could get out of a single occupancy vehicle and instead take the bus and it gets you where you wanna go, what a great opportunity. I'm hoping to see our air sensor network expand outside of Franklin County. The farther and wider that we can cast our net to make sure that we're monitoring issues but also ambient happenings.

That would be wonderful. I think the Green Champions has been a wonderful opportunity to discuss what we're up to, and I know I'm not unique within Central Ohio.

There's so many people doing so many different things,if we can continue finding those opportunities for discussion or just meeting together over a lunch or coffee. I'm sure that all of us run on coffee here. But I think making sure that we're expanding not just our network of practitioners and looking out for one another, 'cause at the end of the day, the only reason the work will get far is by making sure that we're working together and we're taking care of one another.

if I could leave you with anything, just look out for yourself and look out for the people around you.

[00:24:08] Dominique: I think that is so, so perfect. Thank you for saying that. And you gave us great actions to take. We should walk and bike to work instead of driving. We can swap out our lawnmowers. We can weatherize our homes. We can think about renewables, but also we can inform folks like you when they're seeking active community members to better understand studies they're running.

And I also think it's a great reminder that somebody's out there studying the air quality in your city. And I think that's a helpful way to feel like the work that you're doing day to day as an individual is important because if I choose to drive to work, it's gonna hit 

your sensor. I am appreciative for all that you've laid out for us today and how well you've educated us to be more active as listeners, but also as participants in our community. So thanks, j.R. 

[00:24:46] JR: Yeah. Thank you both.

[00:24:47] Christy: I think if people might wanna even learn more about this overall too, they should check out the Summit on Sustainability.

Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability. We're here to highlight the people doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms. 

[00:25:01] Dominique: As always, you can find our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed the episode, you can follow, subscribe, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, you can find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at greenchampionspod. Music is by

Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be back next time with another sustainability success story.