GASPER Air Congress 1999-2000
The GASP Air Congress was held May 11, 2000 at Building 500, Washington’s Landing in Pittsburgh. There were excellent presentations in the morning session by representative student groups from some of the participating schools for the ‘99-2000 school year.
To cite a few interesting results, the Woodland Hills group found improving air emissions from newer compared to older similar model cars. Ingomar Middle School found a high nitrogen oxide peak in the middle of the night at their school which was unexplained until investigation showed that welders came in during the night in order to not interfere with classrooms during the day. Westmoreland Community College found somewhat high nitrogen dioxide levels in downtown Greensburg.
In the afternoon Bev Braverman of the Mountain Watershed Association gave a dynamic slide show of the damage down to communities from coal mining in western Pennsylvania. At the end of the morning session, Jeanne Clark of the statewide Clean Em Up Campaign gave a report of the damage done by acid rain in Pennsylvania. She pointed out that acid rain comes mostly from older power plants burning coal. Consequently, the students looked at some of the results from burning coal as a fuel, both on the ground and in the air.
Following are the schools, students and topics presented in the morning session. For actual data and conclusions from the following presentations, please call GASP at (412) 441-6650.
Moderator: Mr.Tony Sadar, Chief environmental Scientist, SE Technologies Inc.
Quaker Valley Middle School — Mrs.Claudia Balach
- Effect of Lysol on Air Quality-Sarah Gensheimer, Megan Greenwood, Lucas Vasiladiotis
- Effects of Bunsen Burners on the Science Classroom-Bob D’Allesandro, Patrick Stevenson
- Gymnasium vs Cafeteria-Teddy Dunn, John Kasunic, Rob Skocz, Tony Trovato
Indiana High School — Mr. Phil Palko
- Indoor Air Quality Investigations: Jimmy Kerchenfaut, Allison Vaughn, Torey Doverspike, Jarrod Tanweer, Mike Dahleimer
Ingomar Middle School — Mr. John Schaeffers
- Carbon Dioxide Levels In The Classroom-A Study: Alainah Paul, Ben Brown, Alex Simeone, Zach Petruska
Woodland Hills High School — Mrs. Jo Smerdel
- A Study of Emissions In Various Types of Automobiles Kytiema Leverett, Erika Meier, Heather Gennaccarro
Westmoreland Community College — Mr.Gerome Spino
- Monitoring at 3 Urban Sites
Baldwin High School — Mr. Mike Bruckner
- Air in the Mon River Valley and Above the Valley-Jim Evans, Matt Dorning, John Coles, Clara Englert, Sarah Latowski, Kati Ryan
Dorseyville Middle School — Mr. Pete Shiner
- John Hollis, Stephen Payne, Katie Klingensmith, Scott Fortune, Cory Humes, MikeWinters, Zhipeng Sun
Clean Em Up Campaign — Media Consultant, Jeanne Clarke
- discussing the effects of acid rain in Pennsylvania