Finally AirVisual app has added +11 Spanish cities into their database like Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, etc (plus more to come). The app is available for iOS and Android.

All of the air quality information you want, in one place such us PM2.5, PM10, Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, and Carbon Monoxide. An app that provides real-time and forecast air pollution and weather data for more than +6,000 cities around the world.

One of the best features in my opinion is the 72-hour Air Pollution and Weather Forecasts all in one app. 

Check out if your city is included by downloading the Ads-Free app. My city (Almeria) isn’t included yet but I am sure they will add it in the near furure. A complete review for the app is pending, till then stay tuned.

Many people visit the gym everyday because they want to be healthy, but is the air inside the gym healthy?

My gym for instance doesn’t have any kind of window in the fitness room and depends on air ventilators to re-new the air. It can increase the cost of maintaining so do they change filters regularly or do they turn it on? Well, In my opinion it depends the season. I will talk more about it in my next post in which I am going to include some PM measurements.

Mold inside locker rooms is an other issue. You can see it inside the shower stalls, my gym has it. Black mold that grows between tiles. Very bad for your lungs among other issues that it can create like asthma, obesity, autoimmunity, allergies, brain fog and the list goes on. There is only one solution for that to send a complaint letter to the manager of the gym and ask him to clean the showers more often.

Unsafe VOCs from carpeting, glues, furniture, cleaners, paint, among others. In my gym they changed the carpeting last week and I can insure you without using any kind of equipment that VOCs are in so high levels right now. Smells so corrosive. Personally I avoid been close to these areas. Not all people are expert in air quality or even have the minimum concern about it, this is the reason we have to remind them that air is there and we breathe it all the time.

All in all, go and workout but also make it clear to your gym manager that you demand a clean healthy workout environment because at the end of the day you pay them.

I would like to thank you all, for visiting my blog in daily basis. I am very happy knowing that my blog raises the awareness about air quality and the issues we are facing nowadays.

USA, India, Denmark, UK, France, South Korea and Germany among others are the main daily visitors from.

More cool experiments and informations are about to come. As always stay tuned.

CO2 has increased the past years but do you know how much ppm of CO2 is there in our atmosphere now and how much ppm of CO2 was there in the past?

One thing is for sure that it is climbing up and we are the blameworthy.

As you can guess the estimations for the CO2 in the future will be even higher and it is estimated that in 2100 it will reach a value of 800ppm (double than now).

December historical levels -averages
1958 – 314.67 1959 – 315.58 1960 – 316.19 1961 – 317.01 1962 – 317.69 1963 – 318.31 1964 – 318.71 1965 – 319.42 1966 – 321.08 1967 – 321.96 1968 – 322.84 1969 – 324.11 1970 – 325.13 1971 – 326.01 1972 – 327.55 1973 – 328.64 1974 – 329.5 1975 – 330.9 1976 – 331.65	1977 – 333.47 1978 – 334.83 1979 – 336.78 1980 – 338.29 1981 – 339.9 1982 – 340.88 1983 – 343.07 1984 – 344.55 1985 – 345.82 1986 – 347.15 1987 – 349.18 1988 – 351.44 1989 – 352.84 1990 – 354.27 1991 – 355.07 1992 – 355.53 1993 – 356.84 1994 – 358.87 1995 – 360.61	1996 – 362.18 1997 – 364.33 1998 – 367.08 1999 – 368.04 2000 – 369.67 2001 – 371.18 2002 – 373.71 2003 – 375.93 2004 – 377.45 2005 – 379.92 2006 – 381.79 2007 – 383.89 2008 – 385.56 2009 – 387.31 2010 – 389.73 2011 – 391.83 2012 – 394.28 2013 – 396.81 2014 – 398.85 2015 – 401.85
Table data source: Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL

When I was born in 1984 I was breathing 344ppm of CO2, now my body is breading 403ppm of CO2 (59ppm more). CO2 isn’t a direct threat for our health but it’s a direct threat for our planet and as a consequence an indirect threat to us.

Are we capable stopping the increase of CO2, What do you think?

So I am conducting a home experiment by observing the CO2 levels during night and my experiment focus on two fundamental questions.

• Is the atmosphere inside the house getting worse during night?
• Can specific plants help the air quality during night?

This experiment needs time, so you have to be patience till the experiment ends at the end of this month (February).

Stay tuned.

There are so many devices available right now on the market that measure PM2.5 (as we can see on this post) but there aren’t all of them the same. In my opinion PM2.5 is the key for air quality monitoring. Different sensors, different manufacturers and also different software can give different results.

Let’s try to analyze them and see which of them are accurate and which ones aren’t. In order to do that firslty I will present some the sensor manufactures and models. Prices are in USD:

• Novafitness SD011 ∼23$
• Plantower PMS1003 ∼17$
• Plantower PMS3003 ∼17$
• Shinyei PPD42NS Made in Japan ∼10$ (R² ∼.83)
• Shinyei PPD60PV (More expensive than the PPD42 because it allows smaller particle detection) Used by AirBeam
• Samyoung DSM501 Korean copy of the Shinyei PPD42 ∼5$ Used by Speck
• Sharp GP2Y10 ∼15$ (Used by Awair and probably by Foobot) (R² ∼.74)
• TZOA RD02  135$-600$ Used by TZOA Wearable (R² .9253)
• Dylos DC1100 ∼300$ (R² ∼.85)
• DustTrak TSI DRX 8533 ∼3000$ (R² ∼.97)
• Turnkey Instruments Dustmate ∼3200$

 

On the table below there are some of the devices that measure PM2.5 among other stuff and have been reviewed by the Air Quality Sensor Performace Evaluation Center aka AQ-SPEC www.aqmd.gov. Focus on the R² (correlation) values on the last column “Sensors vs FRM/FEM Method”.

An R² of 1 indicates that the regression line perfectly fits the data, while an R² of 0 indicates that the line does not fit the data at all. So, closer to 1 then better results.

 

References:

http://aqicn.org/sensor

http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations#&MainContent_C001_Col00=2

http://www.davidholstius.com

http://www.howmuchsnow.com/arduino/airquality/

Low cost air pollution sensors: New perspectives for the measurement of individual exposure? Madelin Malika, Duché Sarah

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tzoa-wearable-air-quality-tracker#/

New Year and new devices on the market. Here is the new complete list.

• Prices may vary during time.
• Some Companies don’t specify on their data sheet if their devices are capable to measure PM2.5 or PM10 and they just mention the word dust.
• Some other companies say: Our product goes beyond CO₂ by analyzing substances that directly affect your well-being by measuring VOCs. They aren’t clear if their devices have CO₂ sensor.
• The classification of the design between Bad, Good and Very Good is based on the materials (plastic, wood, glass and metal) that they have used and the aesthetic on my personal opinion.

So, I left my home 20 days ago for vacations but I left Awair (one of my Home AQI devices) ON just because I wanted to monitor the house during all that time of absence.

Every day all the values of VOCs, CO2, Temperature and Humidity were stable and normal when suddenly on 5th of January I noticed that the value of the VOCs index climbed from 1 to 2 (Awair dispays VOCs on an index values not into parts per billion). Why did that happen? Well my first thought was that someone has entered the house without my knowledge and indeed my sister in law had entered the house secretly during night to leave some presents (btw high in VOCs) for my nieces because she wanted to hide them before the The Three Wise Men day (a traditional day when Spanish people exchange gifts).

Bottom line my Home AQI device can function more than a simple air quality monitor and gives me a glimpse inside my house even when I am not present. I guess if my house had a flood problem, I could see a spike in the humidity and if a fire started, I could see a spike in CO2.

On my previous post I have talked a bit about the air problems that Greece is facing now. On this post I will talk about my experience in Italy and more specific in Rome.

Great city with great history as well. They call it the eternal city but I will call it the noise city because they are part of the mediterranean temperament. I only had the chance to visit the city and not around but I have noticed that the air quality in Rome isn’t good at all.

Smoking: From one hand people respect and they don’t smoke inside (Strong Law) but from the other hand by the time they exit a building they will smoke and smoke non stop. Cigarette Butt everywhere on the street. I couldn’t walk outside without having someone in front of me smoking.

Cars: Vehicles are a big problem there as well. In Rome they even have many mini cars (one-two seats per car) I guess because of a parking issue that they may facing.

Metro: The air quality inside Rome’s metro was horrible, unhealthy and unbreathable. I guess the ventilation doesn’t work and if it works maybe it’s time to renovate it immediately. In my opinion the metro didn’t have a good aspect at all. The price of the underground was €1.5 per journey or €7 for 24h or €24 for 7 days which I don’t find very attractive for a family and someone that goes to work every day. In Madrid for example the price of Metro is  €1.5 for a single trip but €11.20 for 10 trips which is more good if you work 5 days per week and you need two tickets per day during a labor week.

People have to realise that we need to make changes if we want a healthy future in Rome, in Athens, in London etc.