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Official Website

of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

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    Site Map

    Ambient Air Monitoring Sites Click on the map to get the latest pollution levels.

    Background

    The DEP operates the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Air Monitoring System (COPAMS) to continuously monitor pollutant levels.

    The goals of the ambient air monitoring program are to evaluate compliance with national and state ambient air quality standards, provide real-time monitoring of air pollution episodes, develop data for trend analysis, develop and implement air quality regulations and provide information to the public on daily air quality conditions in their area. DEP monitoring sites are in areas having high population density, high levels of expected contaminants or a combination of the two. The majority of the monitoring takes place in the 13 air basins of the Commonwealth. Air basins are geographic areas, usually valleys, where air tends to stagnate.

    DEP does not generally monitor air quality in Allegheny or Philadelphia counties. Monitoring in these areas is performed by independent health agencies.

    Tour a Site

    The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Air Monitoring System (COPAMS) is a totally automatic, microprocessor controlled system which consists of 44 remote stations throughout the state. The stations contain equipment to measure the amount of principal pollutants in the air and weather conditions. Each station is connected by phone lines to a central computer system in Harrisburg, that collects the raw data. The raw data is then processed for quality assurance purposes and presented to the public in an annual report.

    Pollution monitoring equipment is housed in a 9'x16' shelter.

    Some of the equipment found inside the shelter continuously measure pollution.  Most of this equipment is sensitive enough to measure pollutants in the parts per billion range, that is, one part of pollutant to a billion parts air.

    To monitor the transport of pollution in the air, each station has a weather tower that measures various weather conditions.

    A station may contain other samplers located outside the shelter. This sampler captures very fine particulate matter on a filter.