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CRST Community Exposures to Metals in The Air
The Keya Foundation is honored to be part of a collaborative education project focused on environmental health in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal (CRST) communities. This initiative is not human research, but rather a training and monitoring effort to collect current data on air pollution, specifically metals in the air we breathe.
Program Details
The purpose of this study is to generate current outdoor air pollution information for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST) communities. We partner with an Oglala Lakota College student who collects samples, and learns to analyze and report them by our partners at New York University, and the University of New Mexico. This project is funded and supported by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Community Presentations
University partners George Thurston (NYU) and Esther Erdei (UNM), who teamed up with our OLC student intern, Eva Fielder, to present at the Youth Day Missouri Breaks Research Symposium. Students explored how particles in the air impact our health, and got a hands-on look through live demonstrations simulating both a wildfire and a dust storm.
Why This Matters
This study was developed in response to the loss of local air quality monitoring efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal is to help restore and rebuild Tribal capacity to monitor outdoor air pollution and to better understand environmental risks in our region.
Who's Involved
The Keya Foundation (Project Lead)
New York University School of Medicine
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Oglala Lakota College (Student Intern Support)
Monitoring Our Air Quality
Through this project, we monitored air quality at three sites in Eagle Butte, Timber Lake, and South Eagle Butte for two years using PurpleAir monitors. These monitors allowed us to view real-time air quality levels and better understand how conditions changed in response to local wildfires, smoke traveling from wildfires in other regions, and other environmental factors.
Although the Timber Lake and South Eagle Butte monitoring stations have since closed, Eagle Butte air quality information remains available. You can also explore other publicly accessible PurpleAir monitors through the map.
Access to real-time air quality information is a valuable tool for helping community members, especially those who are sensitive to air pollution, make informed decisions and take precautions when air quality conditions are poor.
Other Air Quality Resources
Explore additional tools and resources to learn more about current air quality and weather conditions in our communities. These resources provide information that can help community members better understand environmental conditions, monitor changes, and make informed decisions during periods of poor air quality.
Air Quality Index: The Air Quality Index, or AQI, provides information about how clean or polluted the air is and what those conditions may mean for health.
Weather Station Data: Weather station data provides information about local conditions such as temperature, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, and precipitation. These conditions can help us better understand changes in air quality and how smoke and other pollutants may move through an area.
