[Urbanstudy] Now pay to know particulate matter in air around you

[Vinay Baindur]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/now-pay-to-know-particulate-matter-in-air-around-you/articleshow/52923340.cms?prtpage=1



Now pay to know particulate matter in air around you
By Jayashree Nandi
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TNN | Jun 26, 2016, 11.33 AM IST
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[image: Firms are sprouting across the country to offer people DIY
pollution kits to measure a person's exposure to air pollution at all
times.]Firms are sprouting across the country to offer people DIY pollution
kits to measure a person's exposure to air pollution at all times.
Want to know what you're breathing? Don't trust government data? Firms are
sprouting across the country to offer people DIY pollution kits.

Arun Ganesh has just placed an order for a DIY air pollution monitoring kit
worth Rs 5,000. Once assembled, the kit will measure the Bengaluru-based
data analyst's exposure to air pollution at all times. Ganesh, who cycles
to work, says he's not confident about the pollution control board's data
as it's "too limited" for a large city like Bengaluru.

"When I am cycling, I breathe in a lot of polluted air. I want to know what
I am breathing. Till now I was tracking Bengaluru's air quality on a
Chinese real-time air pollution data website calledaqicn.org. But I am
curious about a DIY machine that will tell me exactly how it's measuring
it," explains Ganesh.

He adds that "it's not enough to have, say , 20 sensors in a city, we need
many more to understand local causes like waste burning, construction
sites, traffic etc and then ensure they are addressed." The Central
Pollution Control Board's (CPCB) national air-quality monitoring programme
has just four or five monitoring stations in some cities; a few tier-2
cities have one, and many have none. It's a void where several startups
have found a business opportunity .

Delhi-based Anshul Anand dropped out of college to start Ngalife: the
company's personal monitors will be launched in October at a price of Rs
12,000. "The pollution problem will not get solved in a day.

The only way residents will feel empowered is by having accurate air
pollution data. I know there will be takers for the product," says Anand.

In Chennai, Sensors without Borders that also makes low-cost air quality
sensors is screening traffic emissions. They plan to share their findings
with government agencies to aid policy making.

An online search throws up a number of small monitors in the range of Rs
7,000 to Rs 15,000. The businesses are mainly looking to make money by
selling the devices, but the data will be accessible to all in most cases.

In Patna, Ramapati Kumar who runs the Centre for Environment and Energy
Development (CEED) has tied up with IndiaSpend, a data journalism website
to set up five low-cost air pollution monitoring stations in colonies,
hotels and institutes.

It's a tool for the NGO's air pollution campaign. "You know how inadequate
the government's monitoring is when you find that the WHO is using data
from 2013 for a 2016 report. We want to buy hundreds of low-cost monitors
worth about Rs 10,000 each for the entire region including Jharkhand and
Odisha.The idea is to have air monitors on a block level in the future,"
says Kumar.

The Indian Open Data Association (IODA), a team of open-data enthusiasts,
first floated the idea of building affordable DIY machines at Kumbathon
2015 (an MIT initiative for entrepreneurs).

They worked on various prototypes until they managed to develop what they
call an "environment monitoring kit", which monitors fine as well as coarse
pollution particles. IODA sent out mails asking people to place these
monitors in their homes or colonies. Hundreds responded; 30 kits were
placed at locations in Delhi and some in Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon as
well.

"Most of the current solutions are too expensive; in order to have air
quality monitoring at 250 locations, the government needs Rs 250 crore. We
want to create a solution that can possibly achieve 50,000 locations for a
far lower cost.There are many who have contacted us from extremely polluted
areas to say they wanted to have their own air pollution monitors," says
Mrutyunjay Mishra of IODA. Their monitors have been sending data every five
minutes to aqicn.org for the past couple of months.

Sunita Ahuja of Delhi's Vasant Kunj participated in IODA 's experiment. "I
decided to get a monitor fixed on my rooftop.I don't understand the
technicalities of the machine but I do get reports of air pollution levels
monitored by the kit everyday on my mail. We realized that the fine
particles are not a big problem here but the coarse particles are, possibly
because of the construction projects nearby," says Sunita, a schoolteacher.

This explosion in low-cost monitors has caught the pollution control boards
off-guard. "We can be certain about their accuracy only when we validate it
with the data we are getting on our real-time stations," a CPCB official
said.

Vivek Chattopadhyay of Centre for Science and Environment says it is
important to fix standards. "Air pollution data is getting democratized.
Now an asthmatic person can get a monitor and plan his day accordingly.
It's a great form of empowerment but CPCB should make protocols for various
categories of sensors," he adds.
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