State Department staff were surprised this week by a departmental order directing embassies and consulates to halt the release of air quality monitoring data.
CBS News reviewed a message sent to staff on March 4th. It states, “There are currently no days when real-time data is expected to be available.” Embassy staff and their families relied on reports to warn them. The air quality is low day.
“I was shocked by the announcement,” the current staff member said. He asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about his work and said the decision was meaningless as existing infrastructure to monitor air quality was already in place and operational. “There’s no purpose to turn this data off. It’s meaningless,” said an employee from another department.
A State Department spokesman told CBS News in a statement that while air quality monitors are being run, efforts to send air pollution data from embassies and consulates are no longer “because they turned off the networks that are under funding constraints.” When asked about the cost of operating the program, the State Department did not provide an answer.
“The costs to maintain these systems are trivial,” said Rick Duke, who served as the State Department’s deputy climate envoy until January.climate Ideology in the Trump administration. “These monitors aren’t even climate-related,” Duke said. “Why are you stealing health information from embassy staff and the public?”
Aviation surveillance at the US embassy began informally in 2008, when a single monitor was placed at an embassy in Beijing, China. The results were posted on Twitter every hour to notify the public. Air pollution levels In the city. An account called Airbeijing became famous in 2010 when he tweeted that it was “Crazy Bad” when it registered a dangerously high level on November 11th. Air Pollution.
Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
The purpose behind the surveillance was to inform US citizens living in the area about the city’s air condition, but Chinese citizens quickly picked up information and began to demand toxic contamination that the government often disregarded by local officials.
The State Department has expanded air surveillance at other embassies around the world, installing 78 monitors elsewhere, and making data available on AirNow.gov. A 2022 scientific study found that the embassy program was a huge success in reducing air pollutants, “which significantly reduces the risk of early death facing more than 300 million people living in U.S. Embassy Monitor cities.”
However, since the program is finished, the embassy data webpage generates only error messages. The last available reading in Beijing was posted on March 4th the day the agency stopped sending data.
Current State Department staff told CBS News that access to air quality data is important when measuring challenges overseas, especially for those who have to move their families and children to places where there is unhealthy air, or where local government air surveillance is unreliable or does not exist.
“It’s immoral for employees to take away the information they need to make a child’s health decision,” said the current staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation.
A State Department spokesperson told CBS News in a statement that AIR data will continue to be collected and “available when there is a safe and reliable way to send it.” They said the department “evaluates other transmission options.”
The spokesman also said the air quality monitoring device is “just one of many tools the department uses to ensure the health and safety of staff.”
When CBS News asked staff about other tools, they said they didn’t know anything and didn’t know how to access other information.
