The company has more than 80,000 sensors measuring air quality around the world, with a majority in North America today, and some positioned at U.S. Over that same period, new visitors to air quality maps for cities in Oregon and Washington on increased by more than 18,000% and 38,000% respectively. Swiss air quality company IQAir, which also operates the AirVisual app, sees spikes in website visits and sales of air filtration systems whenever there's a significant environmental event like the fires now raging in the Western states, or the Australian wildfires in 2019, which burned 72,000 square miles of land, killed 34 people, and drove billions of animals out of their habitat.įor example, IQAir's CEO for North America, Glory Dolphin Hammes, told CNBC the company gained over 1 million new visitors to its air quality maps from August 17 to September 10 as fires broke out across the state of California, burning a record amount of acreage. She expects to double that coverage in the next six months. Herzl said the company is monitoring air quality in an area that covers about 10 million residents, mostly in California with some in New York. They use Aclima data for emission reduction planning, and enforcement against polluters. The start-up is selling its data and systems to regulatory agencies like the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in California. They can even generate readings of how air quality varies from one end of a city block to another. The systems are portable enough to go in the back of a passenger vehicle, which can rove around any town that needs to be monitored closely in the face of a new environmental threat. The startup's CEO and founder, Davida Herzl, said her systems work with a mix of technologies, including laser-based and electrochemical sensors and machine learning software, all combined into a kind of lab in a box. Other air quality companies are working on more precise measurements of particulates we breathe.Īclima, a startup funded by the Schmidt Family Foundation, Emerson Collective and other environment-minded investors, is working on sensors that can measure particles and greenhouse gases, like ozone, to generate hyperlocal air quality data that is purchased and used by regulators and scientists, primarily. "Other companies try to hide their data, so you have to pay to log in to see it. "We don't need to be splitting hairs all the time - whether it is purple or very purple, we know the intensity of the pollution is bad," said Dybwad. Wood smoke particles generally have a density of 1.5 grams per cubic centimeter, and gravel dust particles are typically 2.8 grams per cubic centimeter in density, he noted.įor now, PurpleAir aims to show people where the intensity of air pollution is generally worsening or improving every few minutes, and whether the air is risky or healthy. The density that the sensor assumes can be slightly off depending what it is measuring, like wood smoke versus gravel dust, for example." The more, and brighter the reflections generally, the more particles. Environmental Protection Agency and NASA.ĭybwad explained why: "Our sensors, essentially, shine a laser beam and when particles float through or are sucked through that beam of light, they count and assess the reflections. Readings on the PurpleAir map can appear higher than the measurements on the AirNow site managed by federal agencies including the U.S. But it is a very strange feeling when your business does well in the middle of such tragedies." PurpleAir sold 1,000 sensors in recent weeks PurpleAir CEO Adrian Dybwad told CNBC, "We feel glad to be able to help people measure and understand where the smoke is, how far it is traveling and where they might go to get clean air. Site visits from users in Oregon and Washington were picking up on the 9th and 10th, as well, as Oregon prepared to evacuate some 500,000 people from harm's way. The vast majority of those visitors were from California. On September 9, 2020, as skies above Oakland and San Francisco turned an eerie dark orange from the smoke, about 600,000 people visited the PurpleAir air quality map in a single day, according to Google Analytics data the company shared with CNBC. They're also snapping up air quality sensors made by these and other groups to monitor pollution levels on their own properties, along with air purifiers to keep their homes and offices breathable. To find out where and when it's safe to go outside again, residents are flocking to air quality apps and websites like AirNow and PurpleAir in addition IQAir. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
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