October 29, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns have had many significant impacts on our daily life. Have you been curious to know what happened to our air quality during the pandemic and just maybe, does it provide a glimpse to controlling air pollution going forward?

Bruce Broberg has been professionally examining Houston air quality since his time as a regulator in early 1980’s. With the unique circumstances around 2020, he was naturally curious during the pandemic to see if lockdown had an impact on the air quality. Bruce and the TRC air quality team set out on a mission to gather air quality data for the Houston Air Shed for criteria pollutants in 2020. Over a million data points for the last five years were obtained from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) air monitoring network as well as air quality monitors operated by TRC. These data were compiled, sorted, analyzed and compared for trends.

In this webinar, Bruce presents the teams conclusions, sometimes surprisingly counterintuitive, derived from statistical analysis of these data.

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