The EPA can call it a good air quality day while your own street tells a different story. Residents across Franklin County kept saying exactly that, and it is why MORPC built the Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network, a set of sensors roughly the size of a baseball that plug into an outlet, find the Wi-Fi, and publish their readings where anyone can look them up. JR Diaz-Hernandez runs that work as MORPC's air quality and sustainability program manager, along with the daily forecasts and the alerts that go out when the air turns orange or worse. He walks through the scale that runs green to maroon, the site that will tell you your ZIP code's air right now, and why any of these rules exist at all, which traces back to Ohio and a river that caught fire.

Three years of block-by-block monitoring produced terabytes of data and one uncomfortable finding. A pocket of Franklin County carries double to quadruple the particulate matter of the rest of the county, and the sensors were barely reaching it. He unpacks what the patterns mean, from the 8am and 6pm traffic peaks to the 3am spikes nobody can explain yet, and why he calls the sensors empowerment tools instead of evidence. MORPC holds no enforcement power, so the whole model runs on putting something in a resident's hands that they can carry to the EPA themselves. The project also produced a step-by-step workbook and a sensor lending library so any community can copy it. Then come the things anyone can do this week: carpool through Gohio Commute, bike the trail system, swap a gas mower for an electric one, weatherize the house. Not the big actions, the little ones. He is also on the roster at this year's Summit on Sustainability, and he closes on the idea his whole career runs on. Look out for yourself, and look out for the people around you.

Episode in a glance

00:05 The Scale That Runs Green to Maroon
05:03 The Day It Hurt to Breathe in Central Ohio
09:49 When the EPA Says Green and Your Block Says Otherwise
15:15 The Pollution Spikes at 3AM Nobody Can Explain
19:13 What One Person Can Actually Do About It
23:05 Look Out for the People Around You

About JR Diaz-Hernandez

Mauro "JR" Diaz-Hernandez is the air quality and sustainability program manager at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), where he works to protect public health and improve air quality across Central Ohio through daily forecasting and alerts, neighborhood-level air monitoring, and sustainability programming with partners across the region. Born and raised in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, he was the first in his family to go to college, earning degrees in anthropology and sociology from Amherst College and later a master's in public health from the University of Connecticut. Before MORPC he worked with the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, helped low income and first generation students get into and through college, and served as program administrator for the Center on Climate Change and Health at the Yale School of Public Health. He has volunteered as an EMT with the Mystic River Ambulance Association, worked with therapy horses, and taught at a nature center. He leads MORPC's Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network (CLEAN) and speaks at the annual Summit on Sustainability.

Connect with JR Diaz-Hernandez and his work with MORPC

• JR Diaz-Hernandez on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurodiazhernandez/
• MORPC air quality programs, including forecasts, alerts, and neighborhood monitoring → morpc.org/airquality
• Email JR directly → airquality@morpc.org
• Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org
• Summit on Sustainability → morpc.org/summit

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