Bad air pollution day in your city? Here’s the tech to get.

Sensor and purifier recommendations for a bad air day

Saturday (Jan 4, 2014) we knew something was wrong in Los Angeles. Like any tech startup, we were in the office working, when our indoor dust sensor (& this less expensive version that we also support) started showing PM2.5 air pollution particle counts off the scale without any good (indoor) reason for the air being that bad. This despite our highly-regarded heavy-duty air purifier being on the maximum “Turbo” setting.

PM2.5 dust levels to remember

Since we weren’t running any indoor polluters (like a dishwasher or gas appliance), bad outdoor air could be the only reason. Sure enough, we checked with our iOS app. Los Angeles air was in the orange “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” some of the worst air quality we’ve ever seen with our app in Los Angeles. (We did see the air quality in San Jose deteriorate all the way into the brown or “Unhealthy” region right before Thanksgiving, maybe because of the all the cars and airplanes accommodating travelers. “Unhealthy” is the EPA basically telling you to try not to breath the air outside if at all possible. This is in a country — the United States — that actually has pretty good air by international standards.)

Obviously, indoor air that has dust levels 10-70x normal (even after air purification with one of the best air purifiers on the market for its price) is obviously a problem just for housekeeping reasons alone.  (It’s a lot of fun removing 10x the normal dust, right?)

We had to bring two extra air purifiers just to keep our office out of the EPA yellow “moderate” level and back into “green”. And we don’t have any allergies that we know of, we (and our computers) just prefer dust-free air. That being said, while “moderate” air quality may not sound bad, at least not as bad as “Unhealthy”, if you read up on PM2.5 air pollution on the World Health Organization website you’ll learn why even moderate (or PM2.5 concentrations above about 13 micrograms per cubic meter) are already a problem, particularly longer term exposures (which are difficult to achieve in Los Angeles given that “moderate” is not uncommon for outdoor air). And even on a good outdoor air day, your indoor air can easily slip into the “moderate” level just by using a gas appliance or a dishwasher without adequate ventilation.

Good thing we had our app

It’s days like this that remind us why our iOS app is so useful to have (screenshots above).

We’ll have a lot more to say about air purification and dust sensor technology (including outdoor models & getting dust readings off the Internet internationally) in future blog posts.

Related posts:

Why big city fitness gyms need to install clean air tech. Bad pollen day in your town? Tech recommendations. Cool data-driven social media video: repurposing best content NASA says 2.1MM deaths annually due to PM2.5 pollution.