#PURPLE AIR MAP SALT LAKE ZIP#

It has the smaller population of the two principal cities of the Panama City, Florida - Lynn Haven, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Other countries also have different standards for measuring pollution.īut a PurpleAir monitor in Hong Kong is using the same standard as one in Santa Rosa.Haven map. states vary in how they record and report air quality. The site provides a unique way to compare air quality across the globe. Dybwad said his goal is to provide people with an inexpensive tool to address air quality concerns in their communities. He started selling the devices in 2016, and there are currently over ?3,000 sensors contributing air quality data to the online map. “If it says ‘very very bad,’ it’s still bad, it’s still harmful,” Dybwad said.ĭybwad, who has a background in electronics and computer programming, first got the idea to develop an inexpensive air quality monitor because he was concerned about pollution from a nearby gravel pit near his home south of Salt Lake City.

“People should focus on the change (in air quality) over time and the movement but realize the numbers skew high,” Bamford said.Īdrian Dybwad, founder of PurpleAir, said he’s aware the numbers can skew high compared to government monitors because of the technology used “but not significantly higher to make the readings meaningless.” However, he said PurpleAir sensors appear to show slightly more elevated pollution levels compared to official monitors, something he hopes people and organizations take into account when using the resource.

#PURPLE AIR MAP SALT LAKE ZIP#

“You zip tie it or hang it on a hook, and if you have WiFi you hook it up and away you go,” Bamford said about the monitors. Once the Camp fire ignited, they installed six more. This summer the district installed a PurpleAir outside the district’s Healdsburg office. Bamford said the pollution district received the sensors at no cost through the California Air Resources Board.īamford’s district and others are experimenting with building more robust networks of air quality reports using inexpensive sensors like the kind made by PurpleAir.

However, there’s just one for an entire district serving ?50,000 people, and the monitors costs about $75,000 each, requiring maintenance and expertise, he said.Ī California law passed last year created new requirements for community-based air quality monitoring programs. Those readings are considered more accurate than those on PurpleAir. The district, which encompasses much of western and northern Sonoma County, has a high-tech, federally certified air quality monitor on Morris Street in Sebastopol. “We’re in a new era of personal air quality monitors,” said Rob Bamford, air pollution control officer with the Northern Sonoma County Air Pollution Control District. This week’s storm brought wind, rain and relief to the area, but this newly built network of citizen air quality data points remains and will be in place for the next air quality disaster. Knoy’s family has watched their dot shift from deep red - indicating hazardous air - down the scale from orange to yellow to green - or good air quality. The Wi-Fi-connected device sends data to the cloud and places a color-coded dot on the map with a numerical reading based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index. Knoy said she and her children, ages 7 and 10, have been tracking data from their backyard sensor - a device slightly bigger than a softball that uses a laser to count particles in the air - every day since they installed it Nov. “I thought, we can do this, ‘It’s citizen science.’?” “It’s nice to have something more local - my kids go to school one mile away, we go to parks downtown within walking distance,” Knoy said. With asthma and two young children, Knoy said she wasn’t satisfied that readings in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol reflected what the air was like in her city. They included Cotati resident Sandra Knoy, who decided to buy a $230 PurpleAir monitor and join the network. The number of local data points increased over the last several weeks as people - hungry for data to confirm what their eyes saw - realized there weren’t sensors in their neighborhoods. Sonoma County school officials even tapped the site to decide whether the air was too toxic to hold class. Populated with hyperlocal data from pollution sensors installed by residents or organizations, became an indispensable resource for people wanting information about the smog obscuring blue skies. When the Camp fire in Butte County blanketed Sonoma County and the greater Bay Area with hazardous smoke for two weeks, shutting down schools and forcing most activities to shift indoors, people across the region turned to an unofficial online map to track air quality.

Purple air map salt lake