The air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) have record­ed an Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) of 126 for Port of Spain—which is des­ig­nat­ed SEN­SI­TIVE GROUPS.  The read­ing was tak­en at 10 am to­day.

The EMA’s AQI alert sys­tem warns for peo­ple in the Port of Spain area, there is in­creas­ing like­li­hood of res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms in sen­si­tive groups in­clud­ing old­er adults, chil­dren, and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments and al­ler­gies.  It al­so notes the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of ag­gra­va­tion of heart or lung dis­ease and pre­ma­ture mor­tal­i­ty in peo­ple with heart or lung dis­ease.

As such, peo­ple with heart or lung dis­ease, old­er adults, chil­dren, and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments and al­ler­gies are be­ing ad­vised to re­duce pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion.

At 10 am to­day, the AQI mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion at San Fer­nan­do reg­is­tered an AQI of 56, des­ig­na­tion MOD­ER­ATE.  At these lev­els, res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms are pos­si­ble in un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive in­di­vid­u­als.  In ad­di­tion, there could be pos­si­ble ag­gra­va­tion of heart or lung dis­ease in peo­ple with car­diopul­monary dis­ease and old­er adults.  Un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive peo­ple should con­sid­er re­duc­ing pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion.

In the past, the Min­istry of Health has ad­vised per­sons who al­ready have lung con­di­tions, like asth­ma, to stay in­doors, when pos­si­ble, and have their res­cue in­haler with them at all times.  It is ad­vice which should be heed­ed by such per­sons in the Port of Spain and San Fer­nan­do ar­eas, to­day.

Mean­while, the AQI record­ed at 10 am for the Point Lisas area was 20, des­ig­na­tion GOOD.  Thus, peo­ple can safe­ly en­joy their out­door ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est fore­cast from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice, to­day will see gen­er­al­ly hot and sun­ny con­di­tions in­ter­spersed with part­ly cloudy pe­ri­ods and a few show­ery in­ter­vals.  There is a low chance for the af­ter­noon heavy show­er or thun­der­storm over west­ern dis­tricts of Trinidad.

In its Dry Sea­son out­look for this year, the Met Ser­vice warned that an in­crease in sur­face dry­ness as the sea­son pro­gress­es will in­crease the po­ten­tial for bush/grass/for­est and land­fill fires, which can de­te­ri­o­rate the air qual­i­ty and stress per­sons with sen­si­tive res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions.

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About the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI)

The Air Qual­i­ty In­dex is a num­ber used by gov­ern­ment agen­cies to com­mu­ni­cate to the pub­lic how pol­lut­ed the air cur­rent­ly is or how pol­lut­ed it is fore­cast to be­come. As the AQI in­creas­es, an in­creas­ing­ly large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion is like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence in­creas­ing­ly se­vere ad­verse health ef­fects.