Particle Falls sheds light on pollution

Snowflakes arent the only particles that will be falling in Downtown Pittsburgh this Christmas.

A digital piece of artwork of a cascading waterfall of bright blues, pale yellows and shimmery particles will light up the outside of the Benedum Center on Penn Avenue until the end of December.

People walking along the sidewalk in front of the piece on Saturday night glanced up at it and its projector casually, but were more than likely unsure about the message behind it. Or unaware that at any given moment it could burst into orange and red flames.

Those colors come as a result of pollutants in the air.

While Pittsburgh has made great strides in cleaning up its air quality over the decades, it still falls behind many other American cities, said Phil Johnson, interim director of the Heinz Endowments Environment Program and director of the Breathe Project.

We have been improving every year, but we are in the last 10 percent to get [federal] standards; half the country reached [those] a decade ago, Mr. Johnson said.

Thats why, along with the Office of Public Art, Mr. Johnson and the Breathe Project decided to bring Particle Falls, which they first heard of through the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia, to Pittsburgh.

It was supported by a $62,500 grant from the Heinz Endowments.

Particle Falls, which debuted in San Jose in 2008, uses a device called a nephelometer, which measures the pollutant concentration levels in the air, and a computer program then interprets the data and reflects it at the wall. The idea behind the waterfall was to bring together urban and natural settings. You sort of think of maybe the sublime of things that are happening in our environment that can be very frightening, but can also be very beautiful, said Andrea Polli, the creator of the piece.

Mr. Johnson hopes the piece will help make people more aware of the air quality problems in the area, which have resulted in premature deaths and have caused respiratory and cardiac diseases and asthma.

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Particle Falls sheds light on pollution