Prodded by complaints from city health officials, the Ehrlich administration has resumed monitoring for ozone air pollution in Baltimore after ending the testing three years ago.
In 2003, Baltimore became one of the few large cities in the nation to lack an ozone monitor. The state had operated monitors in Baltimore for nearly two decades, but administration officials said the testing was a waste of money because the state was sampling in suburban areas.
State and city officials said yesterday that the Maryland Department of the Environment has reversed course and installed a $26,000 ozone monitor in a city recreation center in Northeast Baltimore.
"This just reassures the people of Maryland and the people of Baltimore that we are doing the best we can to monitor the air," said Robert Ballenger, a spokesman for the state agency.
Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein said he began pressing for a resumption of the monitoring in February after reading an article in The Sun that revealed the lack of testing. In a letter to the state, Sharfstein pointed out that the city has the highest rate of asthma-related deaths in Maryland and needs accurate information about ozone because it is a well-known trigger for asthma attacks.
"It was not a defensible position to say this was not needed," Sharfstein said yesterday. "Ozone monitoring can help people with asthma plan their day and understand the risks they may be facing," he said. "And it helps us understand the air quality in the city better."
Ballenger declined to say yesterday why the MDE had changed its position. But he acknowledged "some concerns that some people have about asthma." He said the city's Health Department had been "instrumental" in finding a secure location for the ozone monitor. In the past, some ozone monitors in the city have been vandalized, he said.
In February, David Krask, the state's chief of ambient air monitoring, called ozone testing in the city "redundant" and "a wasteful expenditure of funds" because the state has monitors in Harford County and other suburban areas.
"You don't need to have a monitor on every corner to know that the air in one place isn't as clean as in another place," said Richard McIntire, then MDE spokesman, at the time.
