What does smoky air consist of and how is it measured?

The smoke we are breathing is mostly consisted of burnt wood matter or carbon due to most fires burning in heavy vegetation.

The air quality is mostly measured using beta attenuation monitors and Purple Air sensors.

Wildfire smoke continues to impact our air quality.

Meteorologist bryan ramsey joins us to dig into the science of what makes up smoke and how air quality is measured.

Air quality is in the unhealthy range for most people in our area.

It is slowly improving in some areas but we continue to be surrounded by major wildfires putting out more smoke in the air.

The smoke we are breathing is very light and can travel far.

In fact, smoke from california is reaching the east coast today.

They don't fall down to the ground like heavier particles such as dust or pollen.

That's a health concern because it can get deep into your lungs.

But what exactly do these smoke particles carry?

"a lot of the fires right now are in forested areas so its just combusted wood matter.

A lot of these particles are carbonacious so its just burnt carbon if you think of just charcoal.

A concern is if a fire ever goes into populated areas or building buildings, then you have more toxic concerns when it comes to whats actually in the particle."

You often see me, cort or jason show air quality maps but how is air quality measured.

Official monitoring stations that are around california are called beta attenuation monitors.

First large particles are filtered out, which are measured as pm10.

The pm standing for particulate matter.

This often helps measure things like dust or sand in the air.

Then a second part of the sensor filters out particles larger than pm2.5 or 2.5 microns.

This filtering process sucks in air for one hour and deposits that particulate matter onto tape.

The amount of particles on the tape is then meausred every hour to determine how polluted the air is.

Another popular air sensor is called the purple air sensor.

You can place them pretty much anywhere.

It measures air quality using lasers.

These optical sensors on the bottom measure how much light scatters when light enters it.

The more smoke or the more polluted the air is, the more scattered the light will be.

And this is what is measured.

The only downside, is sometimes the purple air sensors will over do it when air quality is very bad out side.

But the epa is working to fix then since it can be predicted using mathematical algorithms. live in chico, i'm meteorologist bryan ramsey, action news now, coverage you can count on.

Purple air sensors can be purchased by pretty much anyone and placed in most areas outside as long as they are not near a source of