Air quality in Southern San Diego

We're working to determine if there are connections between health effects and what is measured in the air. Participate through our sleep quality and health surveys.

We drove the UT Austin mobile electric van equipped with instruments to directly sample and measure the air, helping us understand which chemical species contribute to the smells and air pollution. Importantly, we will be able to directly measure what people are breathing.

We installed instruments in homes and locations around South Bay: some measure Particulate Matter (PM), others measure gases. We also have a mobile lab. We are mapping how these change as they move from the ocean towards land, day versus night.

We have sampled the air at certain sites to collect bacteria, viruses, endotoxins and other chemicals in the air to better understand their sources.

We are using instruments to better understand the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contributing to the range of odors in the region.

Given that people spend 90% of their time indoors, we have collected air and dust inside some homes in the community to understand what people are being exposed to indoors.

We are using gas and particle measurements to determine how the gases contribute to the marine haze and air quality. The results will be used to improve air quality models.

We collect water and foam samples from the Tijuana River corridor and analyze them for heavy metals and "forever chemicals" — PFAS and PFOS — that persist in the environment and accumulate in the body. We now deploy sondes for continuous, real-time river water quality monitoring, giving us an unprecedented picture of how contamination levels shift hour by hour.

Tijuana River pollution doesn't stop at the beach. Our team deploys aboard Scripps Institution of Oceanography research vessels to track how contamination moves through coastal waters offshore. We just completed a sampling cruise — stay tuned for results.