This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.
How can children learn faster what brings an ambulance to an emergency sooner how do you get the right man in the right job the answer is computers only computers can cope with the diversity of in a simple demands and a healthy one to stand some of the uses of computers we bring you the series computers in modern city government Your host of these programs is that with the city administrator Dr Service Dr Service. The health of the people of New York is one of the most vital concerns of our city government and one aspect of public health that has become a matter of the greatest important importance nationally is air pollution after all the most basic necessity of life is air and yet many of the things that we have come to know and to like do involve air pollution when we drive our automobiles we are polluting the air when we are when we heat our homes we are polluting the air we use electricity we are polluting the air city government government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from from the serious health hazards of air pollution and it turns out that a computer has been brought into the fight against air pollution here weather with us today is Mr Conrad Simon who is the manager of scientific and media a logical data in the department of air resources in our Environmental Protection Administration Conny is the senior meteorologist of the city he's the guy who understands meteorology and its effect and its impact on the people. Conny What is air monitoring and why is it important to do air monitoring and how are you using a computer too to help you do it. Steve we are conducting. Monitoring of the quality of the air in New York because we are concerned about how clean the air is or how dirty it is and. We need to know whether in the air we have materials which might be harmful to help to the health of the people of New York and if these occur when they occur. In what strength OK what are the principal up compound of the principle pollutants in the air that you are worried about we're concerned here primarily about sulfur oxides we generally talk of sulfur dioxide and we're concerned about carbon monoxide which comes from the automobile and we're concerned about Dura pollutant which comes from incinerators and also from combustion processes OK now what are you doing in terms of trying to measure these I can understand that if your objective is to try to control air pollution and to try to keep the the quality of the air good and healthy for people that you've got to know how clean how dirty the air is how are you measuring that and how are you using a computer to measure that we have established a forty station network it's really some Sorry should be a thirty eight Station Network around the city and ten of the stations have automatic sampling equipment and it set these ten stations or just from these ten stations that we send information to the computer. Which is at the the headquarters of the department of air resources. In other words the the computer is at the headquarters of the department of air resources which is at Cooper Union College I believe what does the where are the where are these ten monitoring stations where they located physically we have located. Two stations in each of the Barros of Queens and Manhattan and the Bronx one in Staten Island and three in Brooklyn I think what are you measuring what are the what are the the characteristics of what are the chemical things that you are measuring at these monitor these automatic monitoring stations we are measuring the three pollutants I mentioned before the sulfur the oxide the carbon monoxide and or but in addition we have we are also sampling for the wind speed the wind direction the air temperature which which are meterological parameters that have something to do with how how high the levels of pollution will be I see these up stations What do they look like physically of a small little little collections of test tubes or are they what they look like physically and where are they physically located are they on top of buildings or indoors aware right these these stations are primarily on top of school buildings on in libraries in some cases and they have the the most modern automatic equipment which is available now for air pollution monitoring I see in other words that there is a method presuming a fan that draws in air and in the air is subjected to a series of chemical tests and those the results of those tests can be transmitted from these ten stations directly into a computer by telephone line I believe right and all of this is done automatically without the need for. An operator to be at the station at any time and the computer itself. Sends instructions to the stations to check on the operation of the instruments and to ask. So I have the data sent back to the central station for analysis and I say what are I was going to ask you a Whenever I hear about automation my first question is what happens when it breaks down. How do you how do you up how do you know that the instruments a functioning well how do you know that they're giving you you know correct readings and correct information about the air quality in the area of that station we do have specific alarms at the station which are sent back over the computer these are signals which will say that's certain parts of the instruments are not working or are working and we still send the operators out to the stations periodically to to check on the operation of the equipment so we're pretty sure that these instruments are operating all out at least we're pretty sure in what operational phase they are with OK or not OK So let me understand we've got these up monitoring stations ten of them scattered throughout the burrows located on top of schools and and other public structures what amount of clean monitoring these of these six variables three variables about the quality of the air the carbon monoxide sulfur dioxide amount of dirt in the air plus the weather variables the direction of the wind speed of the wind and the air temperature how often is this data automatically collected and sent into your central computer and how does that how does that work. The computer sends instructions to the station asking for information every five minutes. We do not utilize five minute information for normal operations so we take a number of five minute values and get an average generally over a one hour period because the health effects that we can relate to generally have important over a one or six or twenty four hour period I think let me ask something of a payoff kind of question over here. OK so you collect all this data and find that five minute intervals and I can understand that it goes directly into the computers the computer averages and so on. As a citizen I would ask I'm OK so what So you've got all this data what good does it do you right well we have a function to our collected data over a long period that we can provide to medical people to correlate or to compare with health effects but more importantly we use this system to find out whether pollution levels are high or are getting high. And to determine whether an emergency might exist if we don't do something about it and by having the computer we can look at ten stations in the city. At all times of day and decide if these are undesirable conditions are developing and if they do then we will take action to prevent further rising pollutants in other words. Let's go back to the way it was before this system started operating. How do you rely do you have information of this type or how did you how did you do things before you had the computer I'm involved in it prior to this we had to depend on one station for continuous information which was even and even that information was not readily available it was available several hours afterwards when by station there was an automatic stay that was a semi automatic station not as automatic as as this White House some of the most modern equipment as well but it had to be manually operated they had to be an operator on site and but we were taking this at one spot in the city and we know for sure that in different parts of the city at any one time we can have different levels of pollutants so we had to expect spam to cover a large enough area of the city. To determine whether there was a general problem or whether there was just a local problem and there are a number of analyses which we can conduct in the computer no automatically we can do averaging which relate to specific criteria which really are and health effects which we couldn't do when we had the man around one operator around without having to engage a lot of clerks and and other people OK so I can understand then that what you have now is a much more comprehensive network you've got the data and information about air quality coming in from many different parts of the setting you've got it coming in probably more accurately and much more rapidly than you ever had before when when is it important to have this kind of information rapidly and what do you do what do you do about it when it when you do get it. This information is most useful and most important when we have a forecast that we're about to have an air stagnation and this simply means that the the horizontal wind movement will be very slow and that. The atmosphere will not be able to to get rid of the all the pollutants we're putting into it when this happens we have to keep a close eye on things and we have to prepare to act to prevent emergencies what kind of actions can you take suppose that you get a weather forecast from the Weather Bureau and it warns you that New York City is in for a period of stagnation the air is not going to move very much and therefore all the pollutants that we put into the atmosphere are going to stay in the air right around us so you start getting your data in from the computer and things start looking worse what kind of action can the Department of air resources and the and the mayor take when when when you get this kind of indication from your computer let me start that by our going back to one of your previous questions and saying that except for this one station we had to. To wait for the for the arrival of data sometimes one or two days after the occurrence of of high pollution to act and and know we have the automatic system when we can it is important for us to react rapidly and our reaction has several stages to it we have a very definite plan of action first of all as the levels get high and certainly after the stagnation we ask. Certain the power companies and also private citizens to undertake voluntary actions the utility is prepare to switch to low sulfur fuel for instance to prevent the excess off or the oxides the Sanitation Department prepares to shut down incinerator some of them and actually start shutting down some of them as soon as they are told and homeowners are asked to cut back voluntarily on incineration and the use of the burners or heaters in their apartments. These are the voluntary actions then as the if the levels continue to rise and therefore no immediate effects. Result from this then the utilities are asked to us which even to a even greater extent to low sulfur fuel and perhaps to natural gas the sanitation department shuts down all or most of the incinerators and stop burning garbage the New York City Housing Authority and New York City offices will switch to low sulfur fuel or to natural gas and will stop incineration and finally when we if we ever reach an emergency stage and this is what we're really trying to prevent Then there are certain broad powers which the mayor will be given. Which will permit him to take more drastic action such as shutting down industries or asking people not to drive their cars into the city I see and I can the way you describe it then I can readily understand that every minute counts in this kind of situation because it takes us two days if it used to take us two days to get information or even even several hours to get information the path that was just so many hours later that you have to delay before you could shut down incinerators before you could have the power company switch to cleaner fuels and and that gave us dirtier air basically to be the part of the debris then that is quite true in fact our reaction time generally was of the order of more than a day B. prior to this no we it can be a mount of Olives and in fact places like the sanitation department or the utilities do need a few hours before they can actually implement these actions they can actually start shutting things down or changing right so every bit of lead time makes a lot of difference and that's what we've got from this computer system the very instinctive project when the decider when did the sun monitoring system this computerized monitoring system go into our. Going to action when was it started up Conny well this system was planned of course by Commissioner Austin Heller part of the very sources and the installation occurred during the year one hundred sixty eight and we officially opened the system on October thirty first and Marilyn's it was there and he made quite a point of how important this is going to be in the future operations of the air pollution control activists in New York City some people don't have much of a people who aren't involved with computers and projects of this general type sometimes do not realize the enormous amount of planning and effort required to make one of these to bring one of these systems into operation. The the this air monitoring system you mentioned went into effect in late one nine hundred sixty eight one was the idea first conceived of how long does it take to get one of these kind of things going. It takes a few years in fact Commissioner Heller has been planning on this since Year arrived here because he has been in the field and understands the need for something like this of course before he could implement his ideas we had the air pollution episode of one nine hundred sixty six Thanksgiving episode of many sixty six if we had this system we would have been able to respond much more quickly to that occurrence. So it took at least two years really to get it going I'm always are I WAS have to admonish my our friends when they think that somehow computers are a magic solution to everything and all you have to do is is think of something and say well heck let's use a computer to our to solve the problem with the feeling that maybe it'll take about a month or two to really get it going and you're quite right I can understand that it's a girl over two years from from the idea into operating reality because of all the the scientific problems that have to be solved when doing that for me a little bit about the what are some of the future of prospects for this kind of a system what kind of expansion do you feel any expansion as it's called for is likely to occur in time as a desirable yes this is very definite and we are planning for this already we know as we are cut down on the amount of sulfur oxides that we might produce another pollutant of importance there are new and more exotic pollutants which have been which have come to the fore we have the problem now and of asbestos which the medical people are concerned about and we have planning to continually add instrumentation to the system and instruments of the system to measure these new pollutants and if they're not new to measure the pollutants which we did not consider important before. We also want to are to keep improving our capability to our to analyze and determine exactly what all this means to the public. An aside to the public health what are some of these exotic pollutants or or new new materials which up scientists are discovering do pose a health hazard Well I mentioned the asbestos problem which is where they come from how did that get into the primary source of the construction industry and the fireproofing material used and it is it has been said that it takes a very very small number of particles of a specialist to create a serious problem to someone in here tonight and it's a more frightening thing than most of the other things we have looked at before but we want to look at things like accidents which which form the so-called photochemical smog of Los Angeles which has not been a New York City problem yet but probably will be when we start cutting down the sulfur dioxide we want to look at the oxides of nitrogen more because as we improve the automobile and get rid of the carbon monoxide problem we expect to have a greater amount of oxides of nitrogen in the sphere so as we solve one problem we we have to look at the possibly emergence of other important problems. One thing that's always a concern me and I've been curious about I see that we're going toward more and more disposable kind of packaging materials and. The American family is producing more and more garbage every day that is there are all sorts of throwaway items throwaway bottles throwaway containers throwaway plastics and so on and. I have to I can imagine that these materials which always have some trace elements of something can in time pose some kind of a health hazard Do you have do you know anything about that or no that's all but that's more chemical than meterological but I'd be interested in your comment yes yes we are very very concerned about the plastics and the relatives of the pollutants which would be derived from them. And. The numbers of them and the complexities of them. Take quite a bit of thinking about. The on the carbon monoxide question of where is that where does that have to be really bad where is that more street level problem of the common ox like in some cars you say yes more than ninety percent in and in most in most large sitter's it's a street level problem we do it's actually a problem in the commercial sections of the city more than the residential sections of the city but a great number of people in New York City spend a lot of time in these commercial sections and we would like to implement more activities which would cut down significantly on the amount of carbon monoxide which is emitted in New York City what about the origin of sulfur dioxide where we did that come from mostly that comes primarily from the burning of oil or coal for the development of power or for heating apartment houses. OK Now what about a couple of years ago remember Commissioner Heller was there was a working closely with the oil industry in order to develop better low sulfur fuels how is that program and coming along that program has been very successful Con Edison. Voluntarily reduced their salt for several months before they were required to and they now use sulfur containing fuel containing no greater than one percent sulfur and that cut back resulted in a twenty five percent reduction of in the amount of sulfur dioxide that was being put in that in Spain New York City that's one quarter and. We are planning to we have some legislation now before the city council which is going to be introduced this year requiring that apartment houses use no more use fuel with no more than the one percent sulfur presently they are using fuel with two point two percent so for. What is the carbon monoxide I know is an X. and I succeeded in gas a few a breeze too much carbon dioxide you will be as fixated. What are the harmful effects of sulfur dioxide so for the oxide levels there are sulfur dioxide as upset as a pure in a pure form does not seem to have very serious short term effects in people. But long but in the presence of dirt particles which we breathe into a long sulfur dioxide will. Cause quite a bit of irritation of the mucous membranes of the nose and the logs. That case that's an important breakthrough the fact that we've been able to reduce ourself a dioxide level so dramatically in the last in the last two years right people who suffer from respiratory problems will be able to live more easily know and those of us who don't suffer from it will have the hope that perhaps we will not develop serious of respiratory problems. I know one of the. Air pollution is one of these problems that's really regional After all when the winds are from the west we get New Jersey's pollution and if the wind is just right we've got the winds from the southwest the air pollution starts from Richmond Virginia and then gets augmenting Washington and Baltimore and Philadelphia and Trenton and finally reaches us here in New York. One of the regional implications of your computer based air monitoring system does it have some relation How about the the exchange of data with other nearby governments we have been planning this actually all the way to the federal government level the exchange of data we think and we expect that our system will form the groundwork for a federal regional system which will extend into Connecticut and self into New Jersey we we will put into our system and we do put in some considerations of. Of what is brought in from neighboring areas. So and finally we expect that over the country many regions of this type will will exist and where we can interchange data and determine where palooza coming from and where they are going thank you very much We've been listening to Mr Conrad Simon the manager of scientific and meteorological data of our department of air resources describing how the city is using computers to monitor the air quality the knowledge to make the air healthier and make the city a safer place for us to live and breathe in thank you very much counting my pledge to you thank you doctor service you've been listening to another broadcast of computers and modern city government if you have any questions about today's program address them to computers W. N.Y.C. in New York one hundred zero seven computers W N Y C New York one hundred zero seven and join us again next week at this time for another look at computers in modern city government.