Air Pollution

Worst Air Quality: Hamilton Mountain

By Jason Leach
Published May 30, 2007

Just like last week, the Hamilton Mountain has the worst air in Hamilton. It's a trend I've seen over the past few summers.

Perhaps the mountain simply has too few trees and greenspaces, too many lanes and parking lots.

Here's a table of the air quality at noon today from Air Quality Ontario [note: website results change dynamically].

AQI for Hamilton, May 30, 2007 at Noon
Station Name AQI Category Cause
Hamilton Downtown 28 Good Ozone (O3)
Hamilton Mountain 38 Moderate Ozone (O3)
Hamilton West 33 Moderate Ozone (O3)

Jason Leach was born and raised in the Hammer and currently lives downtown with his wife and children. You can follow him on twitter.

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By jason (registered) | Posted May 30, 2007 at 15:23:51

interesting day today...at 2pm downtown is now back into the 'good' range at 25. The Mountain is 'poor' at 50. Pretty crazy to have an air quality reading twice as bad in a neighbouring region of the same city. The light east wind off Lake Ontario in the lower city must be keeping the air clean. It's downright refreshing here at the northern limits of the Strathcona neighbourhood.

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By Rusty (registered) - website | Posted May 30, 2007 at 15:52:33

We had a smog day in TO last week. It was noted that the temperature reading at the top of the CN Tower was 5 degrees HIGHER than the surface temp - i.e. BACKWARDS...!

All the smog was trapping the heat.

I had to smile, as I inched my way forward in the traffic, when the radio presenters went on the discuss the need for us to build 'clean' electricity generators and stop using our lawn mowers...Don't blame the drivers right?

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By jason (registered) | Posted May 30, 2007 at 16:49:22

my favourite is seeing those digital signs over the QEW and 401 that says "smog alert. reduce driving". Next time I see that I'll pull over into the left lane, hop out and rollerblade my way down the highway. Perhaps if we had higher speed trains zipping past the congested highway traffic every 10 minutes we could encourage people to get around in a more efficient manner.

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By badwillpay (anonymous) | Posted May 31, 2007 at 21:40:19

I believe people in general will eventually get fed up with high gas prices and cycle.
Others will be too obsessed with their autos and continue to whine or show road rage one way or the other.
But, the more cyclists on the roads the better it slows heavy traffic and hopefully in time will force/make drivers think to change their way of thinking and quit relying on commute that does absolutely nothing good to the human body rather than destroying our lives by ruining our clean breathing air, ruining our roads, killing humans, animal life and breaking the law.
The bad will always pay one way or the other.
RJD

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By sowillthegood (anonymous) | Posted June 04, 2007 at 18:00:20

I have two good reasons for avoiding the bicycle, 1) I am eighty four years old and 2) the seat hurts my bum.

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