The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5

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]

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

For CO2 i have been recommended this one: https://clientmedia.trade-server.net/1768_tfadost/media/8/00... which seems to measure CO2 directly.

A popular one among expats where I live (Beijing) is the Laser Egg.

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.

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.

PM2.5 particulates are also a big problem with woodworking and other manufacturing processes. There, having proper particulate capture (via properly designed hoods, ducting, etc.) and adequate airflow and duct design (to not restrict airflow) is critical.

For kitchen use, the lessons are largely similar: you need a fume hood that's properly designed and installed, with adequate airflow (often rated in CFM in the USA) to hold and exhaust the particulates. The particular heat source used of gas, electric, or induction, doesn't matter so much because it's the heated food, cooking oil, etc. that's throwing off the particulate matter.