How good is good enough? -- chasing the dream of accurate and reliable low cost sensors in air quality

a few years now, there are a number of projects around consumer level (as opposed to research grade) air quality sensors. (Air Quality Egg, Speck, Dustduino, Air Beam and my own PACMAN). The goal of most of these projects has been to empower the general public about air quality and bring the problem closer to home so that people don't see themselves as passive receptors in this but relevant actors who can have an impact through their individual actions.

The success of these initiatives has been varied with some developing a relatively large community (AQEgg), others with more institutional support (SPECK, Air Beam) and some with not so great results yet (TZOA). However, all of them eventually face the data quality monster and things can get very ugly very quickly if not taken seriously!

Good data ... but good for what?

Under the [global] Dome

It took me a few weeks to watch it completely (life affords little spare time nowadays) and I am very impressed by the clarity of the message and the thoroughness of the investigation. It does have some hints of "how great is China's response to air pollution" and it does focus more on the emitting activities rather than the drivers for those processes (economic growth measured as increased industrial output) but overall it is an excellent summary of the air pollution problem not only for China but other places as well (don't look away NZ!). In fact I think that many air quality management institutions should look at this piece and learn how to communicate some of the complexities of this issue.

Take this statement:

"Fine Particles impact the respiratory system, exacerbate inflammation of the respiratory tract and affect the entire cardiovascular system. Small particles correlate with a higher chance of heart failure due to reduced cardiac blood supply"

That's quite standard language for the so called "public messages" from air quality managers everywhere but as Chai Jing says "I don't understand any of that jargon" so she and some scientists made an animation to explain what's the current understanding of the effect of fine particles on people's health (see between 09:57 and 12:30 of the video).

That's just one example.

To me the most important message is that air pollution is not the goal of any human activity. Nobody does something with the explicit objective to degrade air quality ... it just happens. It's the unintended consequence of burning stuff to warm ourselves, to cook our food and to cause little explosions in our engines to make us go faster from here to there.

Air pollution is not an air pollution problem, it is an energy supply problem, a transport management problem, an urban design problem ... ultimately, it is a human problem that needs answers from all aspects of human activities.