New Hampshire Magazine: Dangers in NH

[bikehikeskifish]

I found a few excerpts from the March 2007 issue of New Hampshire Magazine (also online at http://www.nh.com/section/NHM) worthy of a mention here. I paraphrased.

TOP N.H CRASH SITES [P.47]

I-93 Franconia - 3 sites. Ignoring the I-93 commuter segment between Salem and Manchester (where the volume is "so heavy it failed to make the bad list as it isn't qualified as a superhighway), the runaway leader is a 1,500 foot link of I-93 between Cannon and Route 118. Dangerous weather, wind tunnel effect, and the fork between the two state routes. The other two segments blame the spectacular scenery

SAY IT ISN'T SO [P.45]

You know you can freeze to death on Mount Washington or fall a long way to doom if you get lost in the fog. But were you aware the summit (of all places) often has the worst air pollution in the state? The state's highest peak juts into the jet-stream crud from midwestern coal-fired power plants as it heads to London and the Azores.


Tim

 

[w7xman]

Not exactly my area of expertise, but I often work in conjunction with the guys who run the AIRMAP project at UNH. This project is studying and mapping the polution across the state. There website can be seen here...

http://airmap.unh.edu/data/aq.html

I'll see what answers I can get in the coming days...I'm sure they are basing this on something...but I can tell you that the broad blanket statement above is likely misleading. If, however, they looked strickly at one pollutant, specifically ozone, the statement might be true...

 

[bikehikeskifish]

"jetstream crud" itself is pretty unscientific. The gist, I believe, is that which causes acid rain (coal burning pollution) travels at about the altitude of Mt. Washington.

The magazine itself is just a general-interest magazine and is therefore not going to be that scientific. The crash data is at least empirically supported.

Tim

 

[spider solo]

Aside from the jet stream I wasn't all that surprised that Mt Washingon was listed for it's poor air quaility.
With the Cog Railway going up one side and the Auto road up the other, it's not that unusual to be gaging on the fumes...specially if you get a whiff of the Cog as you make your way to the summit.
Hope the air quality is better in winter than summer.

 

[trailbiscuit]

I'm not an expert and I don't play one on TV, but overall, I don't think the Cog and the Auto Road would have enough of an impact on the air quality to really cause a change in the data. I believe the cause is the same cause as the "world's worst weather" (not that thread again): the fact that Mt. Washington is at the confluence of the all those weather systems. Or at the end of the garden house with the thumb over it, which is an easy to understand analogy. With all that air being pushed from the Midwest and squeezed into one spot, there's the reason for the pollution. So, blame Ohio. I'm not totally discounting the more local factors, but I doubt they're th primary cause.

 

[spider solo]

I remember reading fairly recently that we in the Northeast (or was it just NH)
That we have a long history of blaming our pollution on outside sources...I think the gist of the article was to the effect that we are sitting in a heavily polluted area...much of it our own doing.

 

[Blue]

I am not an expert, or play one on tv. I did write a paper on the Cog for an Environmental Studies class. I found research suggesting that air does flow from the mid west carrying pollution, which affects not only Mt. Washington, but a good deal of the northeast. Little research has been done on local impacts, because they are likely minimal compared to other pollution sources. There was one study conducted on hikers at Pinkham Notch to determine if air quality would affect their lung capacity (don't remember results).
One thing I found was that the Great Gult is in an air quality "protection" zone and monitored.

 

[DougPaul]

I found research suggesting that air does flow from the mid west carrying pollution, which affects not only Mt. Washington, but a good deal of the northeast. Little research has been done on local impacts, because they are likely minimal compared to other pollution sources.

IIRC, the air around 4Kft tends to be more polluted than the air lower down. The fogs tend to be more acidic than those lower down. (A possible casue of tree damage.)

There was one study conducted on hikers at Pinkham Notch to determine if air quality would affect their lung capacity (don't remember results).

The higher levels of ozone (particularly on hot hazy summer days) tends to damage one's lungs.

IIRC, there have been some articles on the above in Applachia and/or AMC Outdoors Magazine. Again, IIRC, some of the data was/is collected at Greenleaf Hut.

Doug