For spearheading efforts to alleviate odor, gases and dust from large livestock production facilities, the Purdue Agricultural Air Quality Team has received the 2005 Purdue Agriculture Team Award. Since the team’s inception in 1993, the researchers have developed innovative laboratories, instrumentation and buildings that allow collection of data imperative for finding practical solutions to pollution problems.

The Air Quality Team recently was selected to lead a $9 million national livestock air emission study to aid in establishing Environmental Protection Agency standards for livestock and poultry operations.

“The growing concern about air quality in and around livestock facilities led to Purdue Agriculture taking a proactive role in identifying and reducing the problems,” says Randy Woodson, dean of Purdue Agriculture. “This is important for the well-being of farm families, farm neighbors, farm employees, the animals themselves, and also for the economic viability of Indiana’s more than $2 billion annual animal production.”

Woodson presented the $10,000 award May 10. Team members are Albert Heber, Jiquin Ni, Teng Lim and Claude Diehl, all of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering; Alan Sutton, Scott Radcliffe, Brian Richert and Dan Kelly, all of the Department of Animal Sciences; Richard Grant of the Department of Agronomy; Ching Ching Wu of the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory; and Neil Zimmerman of the Departments of Health Sciences and Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacy.

They built a mobile laboratory that can be transported to animal production farms to monitor air quality under actual field conditions. They also designed, obtained funding for, and built a state-of-the-art laboratory on Purdue’s campus to measure and analyze field data.

“Each member of our team, along with many other collaborators at Purdue and other universities, has contributed uniquely and essentially to the investigation of air quality,” Heber says.

Contact Heber at heber@purdue.edu