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How do we know if the air we are bad? Three tips to monitor air qu Prof James Evans, Dr Thomas Bannan, Prof David Topping and Dr Jamie Anderson from Urban360
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very week seems to bring new research revealing the terrible health impacts of breathing polluted air. Poor air quality impacts children from before they are born, right up to adolescence, damaging lungs and brain function and making them more prone to chronic respiratory problems and allergies. Old people and those with health conditions are also more vulnerable. Indoor air quality, whether at home, when we travel in vehicles or in shared spaces like offices or schools can be poor too. This is especially bad, as we tend to spend more time indoors than outdoors but know very little about indoor air quality. We are all affected. Recently the World Health Organisation reduced the recommended limits for different pollutants because evidence now indicates that there is no safe level of air pollution – any pollution in the air is harming us. But how can we find out how bad the air is that we are breathing? We need to understand the problem in order to be able to do something about it. Without monitoring air quality effectively, efforts to improve it can be misdirected, costly and ultimately
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airqualitynews.com
ineffective. This article shares three tips to help you monitor air quality effectively. With this knowledge you can monitor air quality in a reliable way in order to understand whether it is bad, and how to make effective changes to improve it. First, know your pollutants. Air quality is a catchall for anything that is in the air and includes thousands of different things. Some of these things are gases. Nitrogen dioxide for example is produced by cars and is harmful to human lungs. PM stands for particulate matter and is detected based on its size. This is why people detect PM 1, PM 2.5 and PM 10. PM can be made up of bits of black carbon from burning in combustion engines or stoves, or biological matter like pollen or fungal spores. Each kind of pollutant is different so should be monitored differently. PM 2.5 tends to distribute evenly across entire regions, whereas nitrogen dioxide differs depending whether you are next to a busy road or a few metres from it. If you are monitoring a scheme to reduce traffic, then you need sensors that can detect nitrogen dioxide next to affected roads. Our work looking at the impact of low traffic neighbourhoods used as many sensors
