Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton The State Department’s Global Air Monitoring Program gave diplomats and citizens abroad real-time data on air pollution and drove transparency worldwide. Its shutdown leaves a gap with serious health and economic consequences. Tahra, thank you so much for joining me. You’ve written recently about probably a little-known program at the U.S. Department of State, the Global Air Monitoring Program. Tell us about that and why it’s so important.

Tahra Vose The Global Air Monitoring Program actually started as a single monitor in Beijing, China, in the early 2000s. As you can imagine — or maybe you can’t, if you haven’t actually been there — some days the air pollution, in Beijing in particular but in multiple megacities of China, was so bad you could not see across the street. It was like living in a cartoon. You thought that you could take a knife and cut a circle out through that pollution. Unfortunately, at that time we only had the Chinese government data to go by for how polluted it really was. And what we were seeing was that the air was rated as a “blue-sky day.” That was the Chinese standard for a good air quality day. And we thought, how can this be possible? I can’t see across the street, but yet you’re telling me it’s only maybe mildly polluted or it is a blue-sky day. It was one of those situations where the facts on the ground just did not match what was being told. So we thought well, let’s see if this is right. One of my colleagues started analyzing the data that was being produced by the Chinese government and found that air monitors were being selectively turned off at times when their readings were getting too high. That’s how they were maintaining this “blue-sky day” average, which was not correct. So knowing that this data was incorrect, we had to take steps to find out what the air quality really was. We ordered a small, actually handheld monitor to begin with — that was the very first one. It was set up outside somebody’s window at the embassy. And its readings showed what we knew to be true, that the air was in fact hazardous or very unhealthy by U.S. EPA standards.

Terry Gerton How did the program evolve then, from that single incident to a worldwide program?

Tahra Vose We continued with that. We bought a larger single monitor, a Met One BAM, and placed that on the roof of the embassy and started to take official readings. We realized we cannot keep this information to ourselves. According to U.S. law, we have a no-double-standard policy, which means if the U.S. government knows of information that could be harmful to U.S. citizens, we need to share that information. So therefore we started putting that information out on a Twitter feed with the basic information of what the air quality was. Then the Chinese authorities started complaining, obviously, because it did not match their data. We called in the EPA to make sure that we were doing everything correctly. Turns out we were. And we honed our data to match exactly with EPA standards, and I don’t mean by manipulating the data, but by reporting it according to EPA standards. Then everybody just gobbled up this information — the Chinese public, everybody else. From there, other posts started calling us, other embassies saying, gosh — the folks in New Delhi called and they’re like, “we have terrible air pollution here too. How do we do this?” And we said, “OK, well, here’s what you need to do. You need to make sure you’re working with the EPA. Make sure that you have this and this and this criteria all set up.” And it just mushroomed from there. Everywhere that we ended up putting that monitor, everybody was happy with it.

Terry Gerton So the program originally had a focus on protecting the health of U.S. citizens in foreign cities and took on a more global aspect. Tell us about really the impact of having U.S.-presented pollution numbers in these foreign cities.

Tahra Vose Well, it was fascinating, at least in China to start with, because when we started presenting the data, the Chinese authorities claimed that we were breaking international covenants and releasing insider data, essentially. And we realized this is not true. And we pushed back within the government itself. It turned out — now this is an interesting little bit of a Chinese insider play here — that the Chinese environmental authorities were actually on our side. They wanted us to present that data because they wanted stronger laws and they also, frankly, wanted more money so they could enforce their existing laws. But there was a break between where the federal environmental agency had authority and where the local provinces did. And local provinces, unfortunately, and their governors tended to have a little too much leeway and ability to manipulate data as needed. But by siding with the federal authority, we were actually able to make them more powerful and to result in more accurate, transparent information throughout China. So that is exactly the type of effect that this had throughout multiple countries. Now, sometimes we’re dealing with former communist, USSR-type countries like Kazakhstan. Other times we’re with monarchies like Thailand. But it didn’t matter. They knew that our data was legitimate, that it could be trusted and they wanted to learn how to do it. So by us expanding this, not only were they interested in U.S. technologies and U.S. sciences on how to do it, but also, how do we build public trust within our own institutions? So it was pretty much warmly welcome.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Tahra Vose. She’s a retired foreign service officer. Tahra, it sounds like a no-brainer and a pretty low-cost program, but it was terminated earlier this year. Can you tell us about the logic behind that?

Tahra Vose Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the logic behind turning off this program. I remember receiving the notice that this program was going to be turned off in the spring of this year, and it was devastating to me. What was said was that the program was too expensive to operate. However, anywhere that the program was already operating, you had the sunk costs of the monitor already installed. You had minimal maintenance fees for the monitor. Publishing the data on the internet is pennies, so I am not quite sure what or where the decision came from for this.

Terry Gerton What would it take to restart the program? Maybe it doesn’t matter in cities where they’ve taken on this responsibility, but there are lots of embassies and lots of places that may not have started their own monitoring problem. What would take to restart it?

Tahra Vose It all depends, I suppose, on exactly how you want to approach it. It’s true that there are places that have graduated off of our monitoring system. We could argue that China, they have adjusted their laws and they are accurately producing that information. But there are so many embassies out there, so many countries that do not have the resources for this, but yet still have bad air pollution. Some ideas that I can come up with off the top of my head are those monitors that are no longer being used at certain embassies could be shipped to others, so then you have no additional costs other than shipping. Turning on the system again to cooperate with EPA and feed in, that’s almost like flipping a switch. I don’t want to upset all of my IT friends on that, but it’s really quite simple.

Terry Gerton We do still have a responsibility to our own citizens in those cities to provide health-related pollution information, I would assume.

Tahra Vose We do, and it’s also an excellent heads-up type of information for us here in the U.S. As we know, air pollution has no borders. We’ve seen the smoke come over from wildfires in Canada. We need monitors within our own country and other countries to know what’s coming. And it’s not just air pollution as well; I mean, the Met One BAM is only for PM2.5 monitoring, but it’s so easy to monitor any other pollutant as needed, including mercury or other contaminants. About 30% of the mercury that is in U.S. waters comes from Asia. We really need to keep an eye on these things. It affects the homeland.

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