Measure Air Quality With This Sensor Suite
I was checking the air quality of my California home the other day and the first website I went to said the Air Quality Index was around 40 or so. This seemed odd considering how smoke it was outside, so I tried another site: 400+. It looked odd too, since from the outside it didn’t look like the Dune trailer either.
Why inaccuracy? I’ve used PurpleAir, the website I talked about earlier , and AirNow, and they both take different approaches to measuring air quality in a specific area. As SFGate reports:
“PurpleAir has hundreds of monitors providing real-time readings, updated every 10 minutes. AirNow sensors are more accurate, government regulated and regularly calibrated by scientists. But there are far fewer monitors than PurpleAir and readings are shown on an hourly basis, giving coverage gaps and the possibility of getting out of date readings. ”
Solution? Of course, the mashup.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the US Forest Service launched a new version of “ Maps of fire and smoke “ to AIRNow, which integrates data from the specified service PurpleAir. This does not necessarily mean that any of the numbers you look at will be completely accurate, but it does at least give you an easier way to draw your own conclusions (or ignore both numbers completely and just say, “Well, the air is awful today. . “)
As the ad on the website says:
“The EPA and USFS are piloting a project to add low-cost sensor data to a fire and smoke map. While these sensors do not meet the stringent standards required for regulatory monitors, they can help you get a picture of the air quality in a location near you, especially when there is smoke from forest fires in your area. Use the map layer icon in the upper right corner of the map to include information from AirNow monitors, temporary USFS monitors, and sensors. EPA and USFS may update the touchmap layer multiple times during the pilot as we respond to feedback and work to improve the map. ”
On the map shown, PurpleAir sensors appear as small squares and AirNow sensors appear as circles. There shouldn’t be much discrepancy between the sensors, but at least now you can see what the discrepancy is, if any. And then you can make your own judgment as to whether the nearest sensor is likely to fire or not (if, for example, your area’s air quality index is good, but all nearby sensors around you suggest otherwise).
You can also click on any gauge for more information, including a helpful chart that shows its readings over the past few days:
You will also notice that the PurpleAir sensor appears as “green” in this image, although the spots around it indicate that the air is a hell of a hole. I bet it’s all good! the sensor is defective. And thanks to this hybrid site, you have a little extra data that you can use to do it yourself.
Or you might just not spend a lot of time outside if it smells like you are standing next to a fire. This works too.