How Simple Monitors Can Prevent Air Pollution-Related Illness

Air pollution is the world’s second-largest cause of death globally, leading to 8.1 million premature deaths annually from lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema, among other diseases. Regular forest fires are a reminder for many in the U.S. that our air quality can be precarious, but in much of the world’s cities, foul air has been a fact of life for decades.

Tracking air quality is a critical step toward preventing air pollution related illnesses, yet monitoring is nowhere near granular enough. Levels of pollution can vary dramatically within just a few miles. In the U.S, there is only one monitor in the Environmental Protection Agency’s network for every 750 square miles. In India, it’s one monitor per 3,000 square miles.

Inaccurate air quality information can lead to wasted time and money if people stay home from school or work because they think clean air is actually dirty, or worse, result in poorer health for people who venture out into dirty air thinking it's clean.

What the world needs is the equivalent of Waze or Google Maps for air quality instead of traffic, a network of millions of personal devices collecting pollution data in real time and shared with everyone who wants it.

Unfortunately, your phone doesn't yet have the capability to monitor air quality, but there are many devices on the market that do. These monitors are easy to use, and once installed, upload air quality data to online networks accessible to anyone with an internet browser (users can opt out of sharing data but most don’t). For monitor owners, and those in the know about the network, they provide real time data about local air pollution. While they’re not as precise as monitors used by the EPA, for most practical questions—is the air clean enough to go for a run today? can I send my kid to soccer practice?—they’re just fine.

An air monitor in every school

While these monitors are widespread, they’re not in every neighborhood that needs them. That’s why we propose installing one at each of the 64,311 elementary schools in the U.S., ensuring every community has access to immediate information about local air quality. 

We conducted research into the adoption of these monitors, focusing on one that has the widest network across the U.S. PurpleAir, a Utah-based company, sells reliable air monitors for between $229 and $299. Tens of thousands of U.S. households have installed their monitors, and they’re in every state and most countries. (We have no financial interest in PurpleAir and they have not participated in our research.)

While these PurpleAir monitors cover the nation, they don’t do so evenly. As our research into monitor distribution in California demonstrates, they are clustered in affluent and predominantly white neighborhoods. In the Bay Area, for example, the concentration of devices is far denser in affluent Palo Alto, with six outdoor monitors in a neighborhood of roughly 4,000 people, compared to no monitors at all in a comparably sized neighborhood in poorer Oakland.

Read More: Less than 1% of Earth has Safe Levels of Air Pollution

The uneven distribution of the monitors shouldn’t be surprising. These monitors are a new technology, and more likely to be adopted by the tech savvy with disposable incomes. But the uneven distribution makes the network less reliable, and creates pockets where less information about air quality is generated and uploaded, predominantly in Black and Latino neighborhoods most vulnerable to illnesses created by air pollution.

That’s why we propose installing them in every American elementary school.

While not perfectly distributed around the country, there is an elementary school in virtually every neighborhood in the U.S. And significantly, where there are elementary schools there are children, the cohort most affected by air pollution.

A monitor at every elementary school would mean everyone can access accurate air quality information regardless of where they live, or how tech savvy their neighbors happen to be.

With a minimal amount of messaging, monitors located at schools will also create awareness within the school community about air quality more generally, and help encourage parents, teachers, and staff to log on. School-based monitors can also serve a teaching purpose, engaging students in practical lessons about the environment and their community.

The lesson of AEDs

While the monitors aren’t without cost, it’s pretty minimal in the context of a school budget.
But monitors could also be provided by the EPA, and both the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act contain funding for air quality monitoring. These devices will likely pay for themselves by facilitating behavioral changes that reduce healthcare expenditure, improve student performance, and increase labor productivity.

There is a template for schools adopting monitors. Automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are electronic devices that can stimulate the heart during cardiac events. A vigorous public awareness campaign has advocated for the installation of AEDs in every school, and now about half of all U.S. states have laws requiring their presence in schools.

AEDs save lives, and so can accurate information about air pollution. It’s time we asked our schools to install monitors.