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Schools near Glasgow have been monitoring air quality as part of a project aiming to reduce the levels of pollution emitted by vehicles as they drop off and collect children. The project is part of a ‘Beat the Street’ initiative that was granted £50,000 from a new £1million fund to increase walking, cycling and sustainable travel in Scotland.

A network of 22 AQMesh pods was originally deployed in collaboration with Newcastle University and Newcastle City council to monitor air pollution outside schools near major traffic routes. The main objectives of the study were to determine levels of NO2, PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 - and whether these exceeded the WHO guidelines - as well as estimate children’s exposure to harmful particles.

Four AQMesh pods are to be deployed at individual remote monitoring locations near schools in Kitchener, forming a small network to measure levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

A network of sensors has been set up in Newcastle in order to give policymakers a more accurate picture of the air being breathed by children. The project is a collaboration with Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council who have installed 22 air pollution sensors outside schools that are located close to major roads.

AQMesh has partnered with Warwick District Council and Stratford District Council to install air quality monitoring pods at six local primary schools, as part of this year’s national Clean Air Day.

Cleves School in Weybridge, Surrey (UK) has used AQMesh to measure pollution at the primary school’s entrance.

AQMesh is currently being used in a number of air quality monitoring initiatives by a range of users. Across the UK, for which today is its annual Clean Air Day campaign, there are a number of pods deployed outside schools, being used by ambulance services, installed at metal foundries and at railway stations.

Mining applications in Southern Africa which use AQMesh include copper, phosphate platinum and coal extraction and handling. Typically the mining client will set up a network of pods to monitor in key locations around the perimeter of the facility, potentially including nearby sensitive zones, such as schools.

A collaborative research project between City of Kitchener, Wilfred Laurier University and Hemmera Envirochem Inc, which uses AQMesh pods installed across Kitchener, will be presented at the Pacific Northwest SETAC Annual Conference in the USA on April 15th-16th.

Everyone loves holidays, whether Christmas or anything else, right? So what’s special about ‘air quality’ people? What we get so excited about are ‘free’ experiments, where distinct changes in activity help to peel away the layers of air pollution measured.

AQMesh is being used as part of the newly revived Breathe Easy Dallas initiative – a project designed to measure and understand air pollution at neighbourhood level.

If you are responsible for air pollution around an oil, gas or industrial site, you have a range of options at different price points. AQMesh offers a cost-effective way to continuously monitor ambient air quality, as frequently as every minute, with readings accessed securely online and user-settable alerts.

A recent study using a network of five AQMesh pods has found that small sensor systems with a properly managed QA/QC process offer valuable air quality measurements, complementing data from expensive reference equipment.

2022 has seen AQMesh taken up as a proven and flexible air quality monitoring system by more users, including several in mining and construction. New users include mining operators in the Middle East and Africa, and construction companies in Italy, UK and Canada.

Generally, the limiting factor will be budget. The clue is in the name with hyperlocal air quality monitoring, and pollution levels can vary hugely over short distances. NO measurements around streets, for example, are often significantly different from one side of the road to the other, particularly if there isn’t much wind and/or a street canyon effect.

Technology is critical to so many essential services during the current global COVID-19 crisis, but it is also allowing local air quality to continue to be monitored, in real-time, across the world. Small sensor air quality monitors such as AQMesh pods can use cloud data storage to ensure that air quality information is stored and accessible even when staff are not able to visit equipment.

Last month Environmental Defense Fund Europe (EDFE) together with Mayor Sadiq Khan are releasing the second wave of data from Breathe London, an ambitious collaborative project to measure and map air pollution across the capital.

There is a major trend towards industrial operators including oil and gas, petrochemicals, construction, mining and transport – rail and ports, as well as roads – wanting to look closely at air pollution on and around their sites.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has launched a new, street-by-street monitoring system that will help to improve that capital’s air quality. From July 2018, and operating for a year, London will benefit from what is being described as the world’s most sophisticated air quality monitoring system.

Whilst there may be a growth in city-wide communications integration, “big data” and public interest in local air quality, the challenges of monitoring complex atmospheric chemistry have not changed. Integrating “sensors” can sound straightforward but information about air quality around a city must be handled carefully.