Air quality was featured in Shaw TV’s September’s broadcast of “Judi’s Comox Valley Stories”. The 12 minute piece by Judi Murakami includes interviews with Jennell Ellis of Breathe Clean Air Comox Valley.
Ellis highlighted that last winter we were over the BC Air Quality objective for 21 full days. This was three times as many days as the next worst community, Port Alberni.
Also interviewed were Earle Plain, BC’s Air Quality Meteorologist and Dr. Charmaine Enns, the Medical Health Officer for the North Island.
Both Plain and Enns note that wood stoves are a significant contributor to the harmful particulate matter in our air. Plain talks about how our atmospheric changes in the winter mean that smoke has a hard time dispersing the different sources of smoke and outlines that we need to work collaboratively to get solutions in place.
Enns also noted that other communities with similar poor air quality issues are doing much more to address it than Comox Valley is.