Anyone who observes or feels the effects of air pollution can report it to the Jefferson County Department of Health and to the nonprofit group, Gasp.

 

Here is advice from Gasp, a clean-air advocacy group, for reporting issues.

• If it’s safe to do so, take a picture of the event, such as a plume of smoke.
• Report it to the Jefferson County Department of Health at 205-930-1276 or ­Jason.Howanitz@jcdh.org. Send any pictures in an email to that address.
• Give the specific date and time of the air pollution. If it was an odor, describe it as best you can on a range of 1 to 10 and what it smelled like, such as a rotton egg.
• After reporting to the JCDH, send the information to Gasp for follow-up by calling 205-938-4272 or emailing ­haley@gaspgroup.org.

 

If the problems occur regularly, it is crucial to build a record:

• Continue to document issues with photographs and note the date and time of each one.
• Keep a log of days when you see or smell air pollution, including descriptions of it.
• In the log, indicate when you filed complaints with JCDH and indicate the result of the complaints. Keep following up on complaints to see whether and how they were addressed.
• It would also be helpful to note the weather in the log on days you notice air pollution. Was it sunny? Windy? Hot? Cloudy?