Breathe Providence Odor Reporting Project

The City of Providence’s Department of Sustainability is partnering with Breathe Providence to collect and compile information about odors in the city. Breathe Providence is a Brown University research team aiming to understand Providence’s air quality on a hyperlocal level. The first Racial and Environmental Justice Committee and Breathe Providence Resident Task Force found important gaps in the understanding of the impact that odors have on residents’ experiences of air quality. As an outcome of the Resident Task Force, The Department of Sustainability is supporting the documentation of odors in Providence through an Odor Reporting Form, which asks for the location, type, time and severity of the odor. The purpose of the project is to better understand where, what kind and how frequently odors are smelled as well as the physical symptoms that residents experience as a result. To learn more about specific odors and how to protect yourself, visit our resource page.

Odor Reporting Form

Odors in Providence and How to Protect Yourself (English)

Olores en Providence y cómo protegerse (Español)

 

Want to learn more about Breathe Providence and their work to meet community demands for more comprehensive environmental monitoring, especially in places where frontline communities, children and people with respiratory disease are living, working and playing? Check out their website!

 

Connection to the Climate Justice Plan:

The Climate Justice Plan calls out the disproportionate burden of poor air quality on Providence’s frontline communities, largely low-income communities of color. Today, the impacts of historic disinvestment continue to impact where people live, the level of pollution they are exposed to, and the health disparities they experience. As we know, low-income communities of color in Providence suffer the greatest environmental health consequences of air pollution — see the data displayed in this Story Map by the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program. This Odor Reporting project seeks to 1) build a hyperlocal database of odors documented by people living, working and playing in Providence and 2) apply the findings and explore mechanisms for change at every level of decision making.