Precision data fosters meaningful change for clean air

While traditional air pollution monitoring can give us a sense of a region’s overall air quality, new sensor technologies and data analyses can pinpoint hotspots where air quality is poor, creating opportunities for both clean air advocates in the community and local governments to target their efforts addressing the problem.

As communities gain greater insights into local pollution and its health impacts, they are taking steps to advance clean air policies. In Oakland, the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project is leading an effort under the state’s Community Air Protection Program to reduce pollution. This community-led air improvement plan utilized air pollution, health and population data to push to limit commercial truck traffic near an area that features childcare centers, a school, a clinic and low-income housing.

Sharing our data, best practices for scaling innovative air quality management globally

EDF is a leader in innovating air quality management. Our research in hyperlocal air quality monitoring has empowered local community and environmental justice leaders with the tools they need to change air pollution policy and regulations. Our efforts include members of the private sector, government officials, university researchers and corporate leaders, making this work collaborative, dynamic and impactful across a variety of sectors.

Check back here monthly as we continually add reports, how-to guides, training videos, information about webinars and more. By sharing our data, experience and expertise, we hope you’ll be empowered to create momentum for reducing air pollution where you live.

Scaling solutions to a global challenge

Air pollution in certain places can burden or even shorten residents’ lives:

• Global air pollution is now the biggest environmental risk of early death, responsible for as many as five million premature deaths each year. That’s more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
• Nine out of ten people worldwide breathe polluted air from their first breath to their last.
• Vulnerable populations are impacted the most: children, the elderly, and people with already compromised respiratory systems.
• Air pollution can be up to eight times worse on one end of a city block than another.

Watch this 8:56 video for an in-depth look at considerations for establishing an air quality monitoring network.

Harnessing data to drive action

Air pollution management typically relies on a few, sparsely located monitors. Hyperlocal monitoring can provide a more holistic picture by filling a gap in places where modeled data is not available. The result is a better understanding of how uneven pollution can be within cities. This kind of information can help cities tailor solutions that reduce pollution and deliver health and climate benefits.

Environmental Defense Fund’s guide Making the Invisible Visible: A guide for mapping hyperlocal air pollution to drive clean air action provides advice for cities, counties and other local organizations interested in using hyperlocal air quality data to drive tailored solutions for air pollution.

What the guide has to offer

The guide can help local leaders examine specific air quality challenges and research tools and introduces a suite of targeted solutions focused on investigations, emergency response, transportation and traffic, land use, and investments and incentives. It outlines how to evaluate various air quality solutions, build community awareness, and measure progress of policy decisions. It also includes case studies of work with city and community leaders that show how this new kind of data can help design new solutions, build political support for action, increase compliance, and hold polluters accountable.

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Monitoring air quality is a critical step toward reducing pollution, but data on its own doesn’t necessarily lead to healthier communities.

Using measured and modelled datasets from the ambitious Breathe London pilot project, as well as other London data, we have produced analyses that spotlight the capital’s pollution problem. We’ve examined when and where pollution is worst – as well as who is most impacted – and highlighted specific policies that can address pollution sources.

By making data actionable, we aim to inspire targeted policy action so all Londoners can breathe easier.

Explore our London pollution data stories below, or see here for a full list of analyses. 

Metal recycling and concrete batch plants—which produce cancer-causing particulate air toxics—are also magnets for heavy duty vehicles. Diesel-fueled vehicles within the heavy-duty fleet emit black carbon and NOx into many of Houston’s residential neighborhoods.

Our researchers found pollution levels similar to the areas near highways at one third of these facilities within the neighborhoods we sampled.

These results demonstrate how the city’s lack of zoning places some of Houston’s most vulnerable people in the path of harmful pollution. In fact, nearly a third (29%) of the area’s concrete batch plants and more than half (51%) of the area’s metal recycling facilities are located within a half mile of at least one school or childcare center.

Nearly half of Houston’s schools face elevated pollution

By mapping our air quality data alongside the locations of schools, local pollution sources, and sociodemographic information, we can better understand not only where pollution is at its worst but who that pollution impacts.

We found that even children whose schools aren’t near major industrial facilities could face elevated pollution levels. Our researchers measured nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels above the typical citywide levels outside nearly half (46%) of the schools and childcare centers we monitored. This can have a profound impact on children’s health. Exposure to nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) can result in the development and exacerbations of asthma and bronchitis.

Explore our interactive maps

We drove more than 32,000 miles. Here’s what we found.

MAP!!!

Click on the map above to see average pollution levels in London.

There is an invisible threat to Londoners’ health: Air pollution likely contributes to thousands of early deaths in London every year.

Urban residents need better information on pollution’s health effects, as well as readily available — and understandable — air pollution data and analysis. That’s why the Breathe London pilot project mapped and measured pollution across the capital, led for two years by Environmental Defense Fund Europe and launched in partnership with the Mayor of London and leading science and technology experts.

With more than 100 lower-cost sensor pods and specially-equipped Google Street View cars, Breathe London complemented and expanded upon London’s existing monitoring networks. The project aimed to help people better understand their local air quality and support cities around the world with future monitoring initiatives. EDF developed the Breathe London Blueprint for global cities, which includes both a guide for city-level decision-makers and a more detailed Technical Report.

Download measured and modelled data from this project »