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Professor Richard Brown and Dr Nick Martin recently published a paper in Nature Reviews Physics discussing how standardization of "low-cost" air quality monitors could help assess pollution.
Jun 29,2023
Source: NPL News
Professor Richard Brown and Dr Nick Martin recently published a paper in Nature Reviews Physics discussing how standardization of "low-cost" air quality monitors could help assess pollution.
Clean air is essential to human health, yet air quality in urban areas is getting worse.UK government-run monitoring stations and innovative research projects, such as Breathe London, provide invaluable high-quality data on the air we breathe, but it is impossible to build a network that continuously collects data from across the country in this way.
Significant progress has also been made in air quality monitoring in recent years with the development of "low-cost" sensors. These miniature monitors are often much less expensive than traditional technologies and are not limited by traditional reference instruments left in a fixed location.
In this article, Brown and Martin discuss the requirements that these "low-cost" alternatives need to meet to take them to the next level so that they can better support air quality assessment efforts. To ensure that this technology is fit for its intended use, a robust evaluation is required, and relevant literature standards can help qualify the performance of these sensors.
These outcomes are important to ensure that new products entering the market are evaluated on an open and level playing field, especially in the absence of any comprehensive regulation in this area. The research team will continue to work in this field over the next few years to ensure that data from these "low-cost" sensors consistently meets the measurement goals of the scientific community.
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