{"id":251,"date":"2009-12-22T14:36:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T18:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nscadesign.ca\/mleblanc\/?p=251"},"modified":"2013-09-08T09:45:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T12:45:07","slug":"q-when-does-quality-mean-low-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Q: When Does “Quality” Mean “Low Quality”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A: When you work for a North American governmental environment agency.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The “Air Quality Index<\/a>” is used by the EPA, Environment Canada<\/a> and other agencies to communicate air quality to the general public. Unfortunately, the term is counter-intuitive: in the up-means-down world of the environmental bureaucracy, the higher the number, the lower the quality!<\/em><\/strong> The graph attempts to mitigate the confusion by adding the term “risk”, but in doing so it merely compounds it. The result is confounding and unnecessarily complicated to understand.<\/p>\n

The colour coding on the graph is also visually misleading: It goes from blue (cold) to red (hot). Is this a temperature graph–or does this mean the air is better when it’s colder? The graph probably should go from green (good) to red (warning\/bad). Somebody should do something!<\/p>\n

Asian countries, on the other hand, use “API” (Air Pollution Index), where higher numbers communicate higher pollution. This makes perfect sense to me, and I don’t know why our bureaucrats seek to bury the information in doublespeak, especially when we actually have better quality air than they do in much of Asia.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s the explanation<\/a> from Environment Canada:<\/p>\n

Here’s what the readings mean:<\/strong><\/p>\n