Bob D'Alessandro was a young man on a mission.
A mission of great moment that might propel his career as a scientist. A mission involving the intrigue and intricacies of electromagnetics, micrograms and milligauss.
Not to mention Hello Kitty.
Bob wanted to find out if his little sister's Hello Kitty hair dryer was bad for her health -- like, was it as bad as sitting too close to the television?
"It really started to worry me," he said.
It took five months, but the Quaker Valley High School sophomore proudly presented his research results yesterday at a conference at Carnegie Mellon University.
Turns out that Hello Kitty -- in hair-dryer form, anyway -- emits an average 38.3 milligauss of ELF (extremely low-frequency radiation) when measured each minute for an hour at a distance of 30 centimeters.
The 36-inch television came in at just 7.5, same distance, just a little ahead of Mr. Coffee's rating of 6.0.
The family refrigerator was 3.6 "with the door shut," Bob clarified for his audience at the Tung Au Lab at CMU's Porter Hall.
Students from four schools who, like Bob, participated in this year's GASPer Air Monitor Program, applauded when he mentioned that he had reached another goal with his science project -- winning first place in the regional and state contests sponsored by the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science.
The air monitor program, sponsored by GASP (Group Against Smog & Pollution), is in its sixth year of loaning a $20,000 piece of equipment to kids in middle and high schools who want to conduct experiments in air quality.
"This allows students to make air tangible," said Rachel Filippini, program coordinator. "It gives meaning to air."
The portable air monitor, a laptop computer and a special software program can help students with a variety of science projects using air: checking ground-level ozone, temperature and relative humidity, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, radiation, particulates, and wind speed and direction.
The laptop computer connected to the monitor records data and helps students make professional-looking charts of their findings.
A group of students from Boyce Campus Middle College High School measured air quality around the Boyce Park mine fires burning underground near their school. Besides being fascinated by carcasses of small animals that had made the unfortunate mistake of huddling above the fire to keep warm, the students found high levels of carbon monoxide.
Students at Ingomar Middle School in North Allegheny School District took air quality measurements in the eighth-grade classrooms at their school. They found some levels of about 20 percent humidity in some classrooms, lower than the accepted standard of about 50 percent.
Students at McKeesport Area High School set up the monitor in some of their school's vo-tech classrooms, suspecting that more particulates -- tiny bits of matter floating in the air -- would be found in the auto mechanics shop than the child-care classroom. They were right.
A total of 11 schools used the monitor this year, and GASP has requests for more. The group hopes to buy another monitor this fall to use not only in schools but in after-school groups, nature programs and other community organizations.
Schools can reserve the equipment with a donation of $25. More information is available at www.gasp-pgh.org
