Regional secondary PM Possible
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 86.5 µg/m³ near Knoxville across 1 covered metro home to 957,608 people. 1 metro placed a top-ten day in their record.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 3.4 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 3.3 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Why we think this happened
Same-year field measurements show a regionally consistent Tennessee Valley aerosol with a summer sulfate maximum and substantial organic aerosol. This is a bounded regional-secondary hypothesis, not an exact-day source attribution.
Possible This is a transparent hypothesis supported by limited evidence or an explicit inference, not a definitive attribution.
Tennessee Valley Authority researchers / Atmospheric Environment · Jun 1, 2004 hypothesis
A 2001 Tennessee Valley field study found that organic aerosol and sulfate were the two largest fine-particle components across urban, rural, and background sites, with sulfate reaching its seasonal maximum in summer and rural/background composition remaining regionally similar.
Inference, not direct attribution
same_year_local_seasonal_composition_possible.v1: This inference is recorded in the catalog methodology.
Evidence path
A cause is more convincing when the record connects three things: something happened, the air mass moved toward the region, and local instruments responded. Here is how much of that chain is documented for this event.
Source or mechanism
same_year_local_seasonal_composition_possible.v1. This inference is recorded in the catalog methodology.
Air-mass movement
The retained record does not yet show how air traveled from the proposed source to these metros. A trajectory replay or dated plume analysis belongs here.
Local response
EPA monitors recorded the event across 1 metro. The peak daily concentration is roughly 3.9 cigarette-equivalents at the outdoor daily rate.
Inspect the pollutant and weather signals ↓Event autopsy
Before, during, and after the episode: nearby pollutant monitors and surface-weather stations show what changed. This context tests the “Regional secondary PM” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Knoxville, TN
Monitor comparison window 2001-07-14 to 2001-07-20 · PM2.5 target: Spring Hill Elementary School
94% above nearby days
About the same as surrounding days
51% higher than surrounding days
94% higher than surrounding days
51% higher than surrounding days
6% higher than surrounding days
7% higher than surrounding days
9% higher than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
Source: U.S. EPA AirData daily observations and, where available, nearby ASOS/AWOS surface observations. Values are descriptive medians over the retained monitor set; missing measurements remain missing. Transport and source evidence remain separate layers because this instrument pattern does not assign a cause by itself.
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
Views from the selected metro
Select a metro on the map to see nearby cameras. Where an operator archive reaches the event, drag the divider to compare two moments, adjust either date and time, or play the available event-day frames. Camera imagery is visual context, not an air-quality measurement or proof of smoke.
No useful public camera views are currently available within 80 km of this metro.
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knoxville, TN | 86.5 µg/m³ | 3.9 | Jul 17, 2001 | #2 of its top days |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
Public evidence library
Each card states what a source supports—and what it does not. Official records, research, reporting, community observations, and transparent inferences remain visibly different kinds of evidence.
Tennessee Valley Authority researchers / Atmospheric Environment
A 2001 Tennessee Valley field study found that organic aerosol and sulfate were the two largest fine-particle components across urban, rural, and background sites, with sulfate reaching its seasonal maximum in summer and rural/background composition remaining regionally similar.
This source supports a possible mechanism or occurrence; it does not establish the cause by itself.
The sites bracket the Tennessee Valley and include Look Rock near Knoxville, but the published summary does not isolate Knoxville's July 17 monitor-day.
Possible This is a transparent hypothesis supported by limited evidence or an explicit inference, not a definitive attribution.
This episode was grouped from the monitor record by the catalog pipeline and given its cause from the evidence listed above. It has not been individually reviewed and signed off, so its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence accumulates. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula. If it is wrong, tell us.