Blackout had minimal impact on air quality

The September 8 blackout caused many residents and businesses to resort to generators and led to many households cooking dinner on barbecue grills rather than using microwave ovens or electric stoves or eating at restaurants, but those additional emissions likely had little adverse impact on air quality.

œThere was very little impact, said Mahmood Hossain, the chief of monitoring for the San Diego Air Pollution Control District (APCD).

The blackout started shortly after 3:30 p.m., so by the time generators were activated and dinner was cooked on barbecues the sunlight had been reduced to the point where there was minimal ozone threat.

œIt was pretty much end of the day, Hossain said.

That assessment was based on the following day's air quality data and on the experience of APCD staff. œWe don't think we have the data to indicate whether there was an impact, Hossain said.

The APCD monitoring stations themselves were shut down during the outage. œOur monitoring stations require a lot of power, Hossain said. œWe do not have backup generators.

Data is collected on an hourly basis, although the APCD needs 45 minutes of monitoring to provide the appropriate information. That eliminated the 3:00 p.m. data as well as data during the outage. œWe collected data until the blackout hit, Hossain said. œWe had no data for the following ten hours.

Data collection resumed shortly after midnight when power was restored.

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