Air pollution and litter unfortunate side effects of warmer weather

An air quality alert was issued as ‘stagnant winter weather’ remains, but melting snow is revealing litter. CTV Windsor’s Bob Bellacicco reports.

The haze that lingered over the city of Windsor Sunday into Monday was more than just fog.

“We’ve also had a pretty stagnant air mass over the area. Not a lot of motion in the atmosphere,” explained Environment Canada Meteorologist Geoff Coulson.

The result was an increase in the Air Quality Health Index, which hit level seven Sunday morning and climbed to 10 early Monday.

Environment Canada issued an air quality warning for both days.

“A combination of local pollutants developing as well as advecting some in from the southwest, we had a light southwest wind that could bring in pollution from down in the U.S. so a combination of factors looks like resulted in that spike,” said Coulson, who points to the readings being higher from their downtown Windsor observation site.

Those levels gradually diminished throughout the day and Coulson said rain combined with highs around 12-13 degrees on Wednesday will help.

“A mixing of the wind as well as the precipitation should lead to better air quality, a better air quality situation in general for the day on Wednesday,” he explained.

Warmer weather has quickly melted the snow.

“It’s gross,” said Sebastian Aubin, who has noticed the uncovering of a lot of debris in snow banks, against fences, on the streets.

“Kids have to grow up seeing garbage on the ground all the time and they’re [going to] start thinking that it’s normal to leave garbage on the ground instead of throwing it out,” Aubin added.

One very noticeable trend – a lot of coffee was consumed during the wintertime with a well-branded cup in full display as observed across the downtown core and beyond.

City Coun. Renaldo Agostino is encouraging residents to talk trash. He wants residents to call 311 or send him a message to help identify hot spots for garbage.

“I want to know where the garbage is so we can send our crews out there. We got a great team at the city of Windsor. We’ve got St. Leonard’s House. We’ve got people out there doing this, but we don’t know unless you tell us,” Agostino said. “We want to get a jump start on spring. We want things to be clean.”