Month: October 2024

Starting October 9, we are launching our 2024 Fresh Air Experience Photo Contest to raise awareness about air quality and our work at Heartland Air Monitoring Partnership (HAMP). The contest will run from October 9 – 31, 2024.

Three prizes will be awarded:

• First Prize – $100 Amazon gift card
• Second Prize – $70 Amazon gift card
• Third Prize – $50 Amazon gift card

How to Participate:

1. Be creative: Get outside and show us where you adventured. You can be on a hike, on a walk, at a park, in your backyard, or at any outside location in the HAMP Airshed.

2. Capture the moment: Remember to take clear photos, capture the environment, and show us your clean, fresh air moments. Photographs can include more than one person or just the outdoors at the location.

3. Follow us and like our page: You can Follow us and like our page on @heartlandmonitoringpartnership (Instagram) or @Heartland Air Monitoring Partnership (Facebook).

4. Post your photo: Post photos to Instagram or Facebook between October 9 and 31, 2024. Entries can be submitted until 11:59 P.M. MST. You can enter the contest as often as you like from October 9 – 31, 2024. Use the hashtag #freshairexperience and tag @heartlandmonitoringpartnership (Instagram) or  @Heartland Air Monitoring Partnership (Facebook). Ensure your profile is public so we can see your entry. 

5. Tag your location: Include or tag the location where the photo was taken and ensure it is in the HAMP Airshed. You can view the HAMP Airshed Area here https://www.heartlandairmonitoring.org/about-us/organization/.

6. Spread the word: Invite family, friends and followers to participate by sharing this post. 

**Please note the following: 

• HAMP takes no responsibility for uploading photographs.
  
  
• By participating in the Fresh Air Experience contest, all entrants consent to the use of their winning photograph, name, and general location (where the photo was taken) on all or any of the HAMP communications channels without further review or compensation. 

• Heartland Air Monitoring Partnership reserves the right to use all submitted photos for promotional and publication purposes.

• Contest winners will be chosen based on the following criteria:
  • Have a reasonable quality, creativity and relevance to the theme
  • Have a natural look (no use of software or other tools to improve the photograph)
  • Be of a photo being able to prove you were enjoying the ‘fresh air experience’
  • Be taken within an outdoor location in the HAMP Airshed
  • Have tagged Fresh Air Experience and included #freshairexperience in their post
  
  
• All contest winners under 18 may be required to show proof of age. If they are not 18 years of age or older, their parent or guardian must accept the prize.

Heartland Air Monitoring Partnership (HAMP) uses a portable station to determine air monitoring needs in the Airshed and capture data that characterizes air quality in the communities it serves.

Between February 2023 to January 2024, the Keith Purves Portable (KPP) Station collected air quality measurements in the Hamlet of Newbrook. The 12-month project showed Newbrook’s Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) was a low risk to health more than 87% of the time – slightly more often than six other Airshed communities compared in the report.

The slightly better rating suggests Newbrook was less affected by the spread of wildfire smoke across the Airshed than other areas. Overall, however, air quality results show Newbrook experiences very similar air quality to other Airshed communities during regional air quality events such as wildfires and wintertime temperature inversions. Newbrook’s air quality was a moderate risk to health 8% of the time and a high or very high risk to health just over 4% of the time during the project.

In addition to determining the effects of regional air quality events, the portable monitoring project also sought to determine:

• The possible influence of emissions near the hamlet (such as a Class II landfill 5 km away); and
• The long-range effects of air contaminants when winds are blowing from the Edmonton Metropolitan Area and the Industrial Heartland, given Newbrook’s location near HAMP’s northern boundary.

Data analysis showed that when the wind was coming from the southeast quadrant of the Airshed (where most emission sources are located) levels of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter still remained well below provincial objectives for the vast majority of the time. Nor were landfill emissions found to have any appreciable impact on the local air quality.

Learn all of the data findings for Newbrook in the full report.