Undark & the Pulitzer Center visited seven countries on five continents to examine the impacts of particulate pollution on the lives of everyday people, and to uncover what’s being done — or not — to address it. The project is comprised of data visualizations, short narratives, on-the-ground 360-degree videos, an explainer film, and photos from Pulitzer prizewinning photographer Larry Price.
What's interesting is that PM2.5 is a measurement used by policymakers and organizations all over the world, yet the average person doesn't really know what it is, or why it matters. (I know I didn't until we began work on the project.) And it turns out that while developing nations bear the brunt of it, this kind of pollution doesn't discriminate, and it's a problem everywhere from India to Nigeria to California. In fact, a full 90% of people live in areas that exceed World Health Organization guidelines for exposure, so the odds are high that wherever you live, you’re breathing it in, too.
[full disclosure: I work for Undark. We're a non-profit science and society magazine published under the auspices of the Knight Science Journalism program]
Do you work with the people at QUT (Brisbane) or Floreanopolis (Brazil) doing fine particulate work near airports and in hospitals? my partner did some proofreading and english-as-a-second-language with these people, fascinating stuff (as a complete outsider) and very important.
I recently built a sensor for particulate matter (using the Plantower PMS7003, a laser-based sensor) and it's interesting to look at the effects of every day tasks. Cooking for instance causes a huge spike in PM1.0/2.5/10.0 levels, but so do more mundane tasks like vacuuming or spraying aerosols.
I'd like to add a sensor for CO2, but it's a bit more complicated. A lot of the easy to use sensors marketed for the purpose are MOX sensors and the "equivalent CO2" reading they give is pretty much a complete lie except in a very narrow range of circumstances.
I have a sensor built into an air purifier and have observed the same. Anything textile-related is bad like shaking out your blanket, which makes carpets seem horrible to me. But frying stuff really is the worst. You can go in the hundreds of micrograms, even with induction.
A positive thing I have also learned is that opening the windows works best to get PM levels to a background level. Luckily it is only in the area of 5-20ug pm2.5 here
> ...it's interesting to look at the effects of every day tasks.
I suspect pretty much every task elevates PM levels.
I made a somewhat surprising and definitely unwelcome discovery by turning off the lights in my bathroom, flushing, and shining a green laser pointer around (Rayleigh/Tyndall scattering, etc.). Followed up with the same test while scuffing my feet on carpet and doing a few other everyday activities.
It was interesting, so I'd recommend trying it at home, but not right before dinner. Or breakfast. Or ever, if you have an overly vivid imagination.
Are there any schematics / plans for your project? I honestly don't trust Phoenix's sensor data (many times it says things are OK - AQI is green - but just looking around you can tell its not).
"Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have found that people exposed to air pollution levels well within UK guidelines have changes in the structure of the heart, similar to those seen in the early stages of heart failure."
We're looking at moving our son to a new school that's right at the corner of two major artery roads in Melbourne, with some 17 000 vehicles passing daily (just on one of them) according to VicRoads. The building doesn't appear to have a HVAC/filtration system. Playground is behind the building, but still has significant back traffic and is inside of 100-300 metres from the main roads.
I'm saying that the fumes from the cars and trucks could likely have long term health impact, but struggling to convince wife of this - she says if it was that dangerous, then why wouldn't someone have done something about it? I must clearly be paranoid.. ?
Personally, even though the small school appears otherwise excellent, I'm loath to expose him to these fumes.
I seem to have acquired an ability to taste them whilst on my bicycle commute, and will don a Respro mask when riding the streets with the most backed up traffic.
>In the study, average annual exposures to PM2.5 were well within UK guidelines (25µg per cubic metre), although they were approaching or past World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines (10µg per cubic metre).
I'd recommend anyone who would like to clean the air of the home to use products from SmartAir [1] which is as inexpensive as just a fan attached to a filter, both of which they sell (although you can just buy the filter by itself and attach it to a fan you already own). I visited their office in China and received a complementary filter, which when installed in my hotel room in Beijing, definitely cleared the air and there was a noticeable difference from such a simple mechanism. Recommended for both price and effectiveness.
I wouldn't, I've used their filters and followed them from the very beginning. It is an inexpensive solution but comes with its own serious flaws. They're very noisy which doesn't really work well in rooms where you actually live. They also suffer from poor CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) as those fans were never designed to handle high pressure differentials (before/after filter) unless you run them at full speed which is noisy.
The project is interesting nonetheless, it helped demystifying purifiers and rectify the market prices in China (with other brands like Phillips and Xiaomi). Their new product for professional spaces is quite good.
I've worked for a company that measures PM2.5 in the past. Using a HEPA filter to remove PM2.5 seems unlikely to me. Perhaps there's something more going on here than I've picked up from a quick skim of the site (perhaps there's some sort of cyclonic separation happening) but I'm skeptical this is actually removing particulate at that scale.
I have always wondered what is the relationship between PM2.5 measurement and humidity/dew point. From what I have read all three types of PM2.5 sensors (beta ray, particle counting...) can't tell the difference between dust particles and water droplet. Googling around gives me a lot of conflicted answer[1][2][3].
If one looks at the air quality graph of my city[0], it can be seen that summer has much better AQI while winter/spring are worse. But I feel summer is much more dustier and spring is cleaner because the street is always wet from drizzle (dust is prevented from floating in the air). Maybe it has something to do with the lower dew point during winter/spring as my city has very high humidity, from 60% to 100% (right now it is 90%).
I have a https://www.purpleair.com/ . It measures PM 1.0, PM 2.5, and PM 10.0 . It uses the same laser scanning sensor that everyone else seems to be using, a https://learn.adafruit.com/pm25-air-quality-sensor/overview , only it has two of them. You have to plug it into the wall and it communicates over wifi. Honestly, it feels a bit mom-and-pop-ish (it's literally housed in a PVC pipe.), but it seems to work.
Purple Air, talks about how it uploads everything to PurpleAir.com, but their website is really really janky. Luckily, the device has a web server, and spits out data in JSON, so even if Purple Air goes belly up, your sensor should still work.
Ideally, I'd like a sensor that calculated all the other pollutants you're supposed to track, but this is what I have.
The sensor is responsive. When the smoke filtered down from the Mendocino Complex fire last week, I saw a huge spike across the particulates, and even today with the Spare The Air alert, the AQI is quite a bit elevated.
The one thing I'll note about its performance, is that after installation, the sensor read abnormally high until the first rain. After that, its performance is on par with other surrounding sensors.
Would I recommend it? I don't know. I feel like I should have shopped around more for one, so I can't really compare it to anything. I do like how it reports data in an open manner.
Does anyone have a sense of where the damage is done regarding PM? I live in SF and our apartment is a block away from a busy road and a gas station, both of which concern me.
Not to mention the wild fires of late depositing ash all over our yard.. Also, being a SF apartment, there isn't A/C so we leave the windows open on hot days.
Is there data around whether an active air filter running in a closed room before we go to sleep will help? Should it just run constantly? Is there any good method to actually lower the amount of PM I'm inhaling?
PM2.5 are mostly secondary organic aerosols, meaning particles that form after the reaction of other emissions. Unfortunately these can occur even with chemicals that have traveled for days and then they react with local emissions. So if you live in a forest which emitts a load of pinene and other organics and due to microclimate you receive NOX etc from a city not that nearby, boom you get very high PM2.5.
You can use www.breezometer.com to check real time PM2.5 readings in your location. Based on that you can figure out whether you need an air filter or not.
[+] [-] anarbadalov|7 years ago|reply
What's interesting is that PM2.5 is a measurement used by policymakers and organizations all over the world, yet the average person doesn't really know what it is, or why it matters. (I know I didn't until we began work on the project.) And it turns out that while developing nations bear the brunt of it, this kind of pollution doesn't discriminate, and it's a problem everywhere from India to Nigeria to California. In fact, a full 90% of people live in areas that exceed World Health Organization guidelines for exposure, so the odds are high that wherever you live, you’re breathing it in, too.
[full disclosure: I work for Undark. We're a non-profit science and society magazine published under the auspices of the Knight Science Journalism program]
[+] [-] sberder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gh02t|7 years ago|reply
I'd like to add a sensor for CO2, but it's a bit more complicated. A lot of the easy to use sensors marketed for the purpose are MOX sensors and the "equivalent CO2" reading they give is pretty much a complete lie except in a very narrow range of circumstances.
[+] [-] legulere|7 years ago|reply
A positive thing I have also learned is that opening the windows works best to get PM levels to a background level. Luckily it is only in the area of 5-20ug pm2.5 here
For CO2 i have been recommended this one: https://clientmedia.trade-server.net/1768_tfadost/media/8/00... which seems to measure CO2 directly.
[+] [-] ridgeguy|7 years ago|reply
I suspect pretty much every task elevates PM levels.
I made a somewhat surprising and definitely unwelcome discovery by turning off the lights in my bathroom, flushing, and shining a green laser pointer around (Rayleigh/Tyndall scattering, etc.). Followed up with the same test while scuffing my feet on carpet and doing a few other everyday activities.
It was interesting, so I'd recommend trying it at home, but not right before dinner. Or breakfast. Or ever, if you have an overly vivid imagination.
[+] [-] clumsysmurf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gascan|7 years ago|reply
I've heard before that cooking with gas causes significantly more indoor air quality problems, but I'm curious what your observations are.
[+] [-] bigmit37|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clumsysmurf|7 years ago|reply
"Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have found that people exposed to air pollution levels well within UK guidelines have changes in the structure of the heart, similar to those seen in the early stages of heart failure."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180803103315.h...
[+] [-] sundvor|7 years ago|reply
We're looking at moving our son to a new school that's right at the corner of two major artery roads in Melbourne, with some 17 000 vehicles passing daily (just on one of them) according to VicRoads. The building doesn't appear to have a HVAC/filtration system. Playground is behind the building, but still has significant back traffic and is inside of 100-300 metres from the main roads.
I'm saying that the fumes from the cars and trucks could likely have long term health impact, but struggling to convince wife of this - she says if it was that dangerous, then why wouldn't someone have done something about it? I must clearly be paranoid.. ?
Personally, even though the small school appears otherwise excellent, I'm loath to expose him to these fumes.
I seem to have acquired an ability to taste them whilst on my bicycle commute, and will don a Respro mask when riding the streets with the most backed up traffic.
[+] [-] graeme|7 years ago|reply
What AQI do these numbers translate to?
[+] [-] b_b|7 years ago|reply
[1] = https://smartairfilters.com/cn/en/?r=global
[+] [-] sberder|7 years ago|reply
The project is interesting nonetheless, it helped demystifying purifiers and rectify the market prices in China (with other brands like Phillips and Xiaomi). Their new product for professional spaces is quite good.
[+] [-] staikken|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clumsysmurf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coconut_crab|7 years ago|reply
If one looks at the air quality graph of my city[0], it can be seen that summer has much better AQI while winter/spring are worse. But I feel summer is much more dustier and spring is cleaner because the street is always wet from drizzle (dust is prevented from floating in the air). Maybe it has something to do with the lower dew point during winter/spring as my city has very high humidity, from 60% to 100% (right now it is 90%).
[0] http://hanoiair.de/en_US/
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555266/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29063278
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4072227/
[+] [-] elektor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathankoren|7 years ago|reply
Purple Air, talks about how it uploads everything to PurpleAir.com, but their website is really really janky. Luckily, the device has a web server, and spits out data in JSON, so even if Purple Air goes belly up, your sensor should still work.
I have mine integrated into http://www.weewx.com/ via https://github.com/bakerkj/weewx-purpleair , and I calculate an Air Quality Index from this data using https://github.com/jonathankoren/weewx-aqi .
Ideally, I'd like a sensor that calculated all the other pollutants you're supposed to track, but this is what I have.
The sensor is responsive. When the smoke filtered down from the Mendocino Complex fire last week, I saw a huge spike across the particulates, and even today with the Spare The Air alert, the AQI is quite a bit elevated.
The one thing I'll note about its performance, is that after installation, the sensor read abnormally high until the first rain. After that, its performance is on par with other surrounding sensors.
Would I recommend it? I don't know. I feel like I should have shopped around more for one, so I can't really compare it to anything. I do like how it reports data in an open manner.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|7 years ago|reply
I compared it with a friends much more expensive device, and the results were within 5% of each other.
[+] [-] exogen|7 years ago|reply
The neat thing is that it has an API, so I was able to build my own pretty dashboard showing PM, VOCs, and CO2 in my apartment.
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeyouse|7 years ago|reply
Is there data around whether an active air filter running in a closed room before we go to sleep will help? Should it just run constantly? Is there any good method to actually lower the amount of PM I'm inhaling?
[+] [-] whatever1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathankoren|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyrildorsaz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alfozan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkhorn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|7 years ago|reply