The Battle for Clean Air in Phoenix: ASU Researchers Working to Address Ozone Pollution

Phoenix’s ozone is ranked among the worst in the nation. Now, ASU researchers are trying to better understand how to address pollutants that can be controlled.

A GPS might be able to take you around a backup on the I-10 and the frigid air conditioning of a movie theater can help you find relief from a 115-degree Phoenix summer day, but the infamously bad air quality of the Valley is something that can’t be avoided.

The American Lung Association ranked the Phoenix metro area fifth in the nation among the most ozone-polluted cities.

Now, a study out of Arizona State University is looking to better understand precursors to ozone to improve the Valley’s air quality.

“In the Phoenix area, we are in violation of ozone standards,” said Pierre Herckes, a Professor at ASU’s School of Molecular Sciences. “And so a question is, ‘What can we do against it?’”

Ozone forms in the air with three components: Sunlight, nitrogen oxides – like vehicle combustion – and volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs.

Herckes describes VOCs as gas molecules that have a smell.

Those ozone precursors have human sources like gasoline, beauty products, and deodorants. In addition, VOCs can come from natural sources like plants.

It’s the natural components that researchers at ASU are hoping to better understand through the study funded by a grant from the Arizona Board of Regents.

Herckes and Matthew Fraser are leading the study with PhD student researchers Trinity Olguin and Gabby Cano.

Specifically, the study is looking at how the VOCs change with the increase in temperature in a Valley summer.

“We can kind of control regulations – human sources, but we cannot really control biogenic sources,” Herckes said. “I mean, nobody would really propose to cut down all the trees or get rid of all the vegetation.”

It’s something that hasn’t been studied in Phoenix or any climate like it, the researchers say.

“The amount of gases that get released from natural systems like vegetation and other plants changes with temperature,” Olguin said. “The question we’re that we’re asking is: ‘How does that change when the temperatures are really, really hot? Because we haven’t measured those.”

The researchers are doing that now, installing equipment in three spots throughout the Valley to measure VOCs 24 hours a day.

The measurements have been completed in a west Phoenix neighborhood. In July, the team’s trailer with instruments gathered measurements in a more natural desert area in Mesa. When the measurements are completed there, the team will test at an agricultural site.

“Different plants emit different things and so native desert plant species might emit completely different things from a huge agricultural field and all three of those things are very present in the Phoenix and Valley,” Olguin said.

The researchers are hoping to use the measurements to offer better recommendations to address air quality in the Valley by knowing how big of a contribution natural VOCs are to ozone in the Valley.

“This can help us address air pollution, not by getting rid of all the plants or the trees, but understanding the factors that we cannot control to better understand on which factors that we can control we should act upon,” Herckes said.

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