The Shelby County Health Department has raised questions about the integrity of data behind a May community air monitoring project report that indicated that South Memphis residents are being regularly exposed to unhealthy air pollution.
In a statement to the Lookout, the health department wrote that the monitors used by the project are not approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for regulatory purposes, and can have a high sampling error depending on weather conditions.
The researchers behind the report countered that they followed guidelines and corrective equations published by the EPA to calibrate data from the PurpleAir monitors they used to measure fine particle pollution…