Story by Greg Osborne –
You’re wondering what that rig is sitting in Mason City’s East Park. Or you may have seen the signs “SMOKE SCHOOL”. It’s not about quitting smoking or staying away from pot. It’s Aeromet’s (www.aeromet.org) air quality tester certification station. Any company that emits smoke from it’s manufacturing process must run frequent tests for excessive pollutants. The testing is done by the company’s own employees and Aeromet tests the employees to make sure they are doing the test accurately. They must get certified every six months.
How it works: The test is purely visual. The rig gererates non-toxic smoke from it’s stack. The density of the smoke is carefully computer controlled. Opacity is the yardstick they use for determining air quality. The observer-the person being tested, stands back and looks at the smoke up against the background. The background will either be blue sky for black smoke or green trees for white smoke. A comparison is made of the sky or trees with and without the smoke. The amount of blockage from the smoke is estimated. If 30% of the background is shaded out that is called 30% opacity and that might be in violation of state law.
Seth Muenks (shown in the photo) expects about 30 people today to get tested and hopefully certified. There are five crews from Aeromet traveling the midwest doing the certifications. Seth just completed his training and runs the rig by himself. He has a wife and kids back home in Missouri but gets to be home every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He got the job with Aeromat after completeing his military service. He was selected over 50 other applicants.
More interesting stuff about Seth. He served in Afganistan in the army as a construction engineer but he said they didn’t do much building because of the mortar and other arms fire from enemy forces. Asked his opinion of the value of our presence he said we are there in one sense to stand between Pakistan that has nuclear capability and Iran that wants it. Both very dangerous parties. He says just like we are still in Germany, Japan and Korea as a result of those wars we will now always be in Afganistan. Maybe in reduced numbers but we will always be there. Ten years from now those enlisting in military service will have Afganistan as one option. He says the US has built some expensive heavy duty buildings there so it’s not likely we would leave them.
