Air Monitoring Results

When the air monitoring technology, the Sentry, detects a Foul Five chemical above the level of concern for that chemical, an air quality alert will be posted on this website. The air quality alerts provides you information about when, where, and what time high levels of the chemicals are detected. Why is this important? Exposure to the Foul Five chemicals can have both short-term and long-term consequences on your health. That is why it is important to track what chemicals ExxonMobil's Chalmette Refining emits. Also, each air quality alert includes the past history of the number of times incidents were reported.

Please note that the air quality alerts will only be posted when a chemical is actually above the level of concern for several minutes or more. That means there are times when chemicals are being emitted, but they are not at high enough levels to trigger an alert. For some chemicals, like sulfur dioxide, the monitor is periodically detecting brief periods where pollution levels are above the levels of concern. Alerts will be posted for sulfur dioxide when screening levels are exceeded for a substantial period of time. This may explain why you can smell an odor and do not see an air quality alert posted. There are some chemicals that you can smell at lower levels than the current levels of concern. We do keep record of all the data recorded by the Sentry.

Please also note that when the monitor is detecting air pollution and the wind is blowing from the southeast, this pollution is coming from the direction of Chalmette Refining. When the wind is coming from a largely different direction, this means the air pollution is coming from some other source.

Alerts:
• May 9, 2005
• May 8, 2005
• May 7, 2005
• May 6 & 7, 2005
• May 6, 2005
• April 28, 2005