Inside the Car

Been inside the car doesn’t keep you safe from the air pollutants of the street and traffic at least if you don’t own a Tesla Car with Bioweapon Defense Mode activated.

I made a trip from my city Almeria to Malaga and back. The journey was approximately 4h long in total via the highway. The graphs are divided into two pieces. The first one is the trip from Almeria to Malaga and the second piece is the way back. On my way to Malaga the weather was rainy throughout the whole trip which I think worked as an air cleaner because the rain droplets trap PMs and don’t allow them to flow freely in the air. On my way back to Almeria there wasn’t any traffic at all on the road due to late hour of the trip (01:00am-03:00am), so there wasn’t any particular pollution in the air either.

Now let’s see what happens when you drive a car at pick hours at the city center and without raining to settle down air pollutants.

There were two spikes over the recommended limit of 25μg/m3 and both times the car was still waiting behind a conventional bus on the traffic lights and some other cars were around as well.

In conclusion the air quality inside the car will decrease when you drive in busy streets due to Particulate Matter emissions by tyres, burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, asphalt rubber friction etc… Your car has got an air filter remember that you have to replace it and ask your mechanic if there is a better quality filter that you can install.