Do we breathe the same air?

Abstract

91% of the world's population lives in areas where air pollution exceeds safety limits1. Research has focused on monitoring ambient air pollution, but individual exposure to air pollution is not equal to ambient and is thus important to measure. Our work (in progress) measures individual exposures of different categories of people on an academic campus. We highlight some anecdotal findings and surprising insights from monitoring, such as a) Indoor CO2 concentration of 1.8 times higher than the permissible limit. Over 10 times the WHO limit of PM2.5 exposure during b) construction-related activities, and c) cooking (despite the use of exhaust). We also found that during transit, the PM2.5 exposure is at least two times higher than indoor. Our current work though in progress, already shows important findings affecting different people associated with an academic campus. In the future, we plan to do a more exhaustive study and reduce the form factor and energy needs for our sensors to scale the study.