A Primary Quality Assurance Organization (PQAO) is a monitoring organization or a group of monitoring organizations that is responsible for a set of stations that monitors the same pollutant and for which data quality assessments will be pooled. Since data quality assessments are made and data certified at the PQAO level, the monitoring organization identified as the PQAO will be responsible for the oversight of the quality of data of all monitoring organizations within the PQAO.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as one of the seven PQAOs responsible for monitoring air pollution in California. CARB’s PQAO consists of CARB and 32 air monitoring organizations throughout California. In addition to CARB, 21 of these 32 organizations collect ambient air monitoring data. The data generated are utilized to define the nature and severity of pollution in California, determine attainment status with federal and State standards, identify pollution trends, support agricultural burn forecasting, and develop air models and emission inventories.

California PQAOs:

• CARB
• Bay Area Air Quality Monitoring District
• South Coast Air Quality Management District
• San Diego County Air Pollution Control District
• National Park Service
• Morongo Band of Mission Indians
• Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians