Attilio Poli
Managing Director at Asia Pacific Air Quality Group Pte Ltd
Monitoring the Haze at Our Own Place
During the past few days Singapore has been affected by the haze
originating from the wild fires in Sumatra (Indonesia). The
concentrations of PM2.5 have often reached unhealthy levels and we all
have been looking at the update of the PSI (Pollution Standard Index)
data.
Unfortunately monitoring the quality of the air with adequate professional instruments has always been extremely expensive, making it impossible to have a capillary coverage with monitoring equipment, so we have always relied on the data from few locations published only after a while.
Since Sunday I'd been monitoring the haze right outside the gate of my place. And the information that is possible to gather is incredibly rich and useful: instant updates of the situation every 5 minutes with that data available on the web.
Yesterday evening (September 14) the situation here in Singapore has become really bad as everyone has saw getting out of the office (look at the picture taken at Marina Bay).
But
knowing the actual values makes a big difference, especially when the
concentrations are sky rocketing like yesterday evening. The chart below
shows what happened between 6 and 7 PM. It is impressive!
Within
just an hour the concentrations suddenly spiked from 150 microgr./m3
(that's already a very high value), to a record 5 minutes average of
612! Consider that values of 250 microgr./m3 are already considered
hazardous (the average over 24 hours).
I used those data to call home and to recommend to shut all the windows, turn on the air conditioning and overall recommended the kids to suspend any kind of physical activities, even indoor and just to play table games or to do their homework (so they will grow up even more willing to do something to fight air pollution ...).
Quite easy to figure out many possible applications and places useful to protect our communities: schools, sport facilities, hospitals, shopping malls, condos, MRT stations, etc. All places where actions can be taken timely, like suspending any physical activities or improving the ventilation. To protect the health of the people inside.
We need to know the quality of the air that we breath
The concentrations can be different from place to place and what we need to know more is how much high and unhealthy is the air that we are breathing where we are living, working, where our kids are playing.We need to know it right now
It is extremely important to know that the air that we are breathing is unhealthy exactly in the moment when it happens, not later, even if it is only three hours later.Unfortunately monitoring the quality of the air with adequate professional instruments has always been extremely expensive, making it impossible to have a capillary coverage with monitoring equipment, so we have always relied on the data from few locations published only after a while.
Community Haze Monitoring
Internet of Things ... compact equipment ... now it is possible at reasonable costs to have reliable and easy to use devices to be used for local air quality monitoring. The one in the picture below is the Neighbourhood Air Monitor developed by Met One Instruments using the laser light-scattering engine already implemented on other more expensive devices.Since Sunday I'd been monitoring the haze right outside the gate of my place. And the information that is possible to gather is incredibly rich and useful: instant updates of the situation every 5 minutes with that data available on the web.
Yesterday evening (September 14) the situation here in Singapore has become really bad as everyone has saw getting out of the office (look at the picture taken at Marina Bay).
But
knowing the actual values makes a big difference, especially when the
concentrations are sky rocketing like yesterday evening. The chart below
shows what happened between 6 and 7 PM. It is impressive!Within
just an hour the concentrations suddenly spiked from 150 microgr./m3
(that's already a very high value), to a record 5 minutes average of
612! Consider that values of 250 microgr./m3 are already considered
hazardous (the average over 24 hours).I used those data to call home and to recommend to shut all the windows, turn on the air conditioning and overall recommended the kids to suspend any kind of physical activities, even indoor and just to play table games or to do their homework (so they will grow up even more willing to do something to fight air pollution ...).
Knowing more to protect our health
It is our air quality, using a device like this is not just to fulfil our curiosity, it provides us extremely useful information to protect our and our dears' health.Quite easy to figure out many possible applications and places useful to protect our communities: schools, sport facilities, hospitals, shopping malls, condos, MRT stations, etc. All places where actions can be taken timely, like suspending any physical activities or improving the ventilation. To protect the health of the people inside.
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