Home air quality kits rising in popularity

A rising number of city-dwellers are using home air quality monitoring kits to check the quality of the air due to fears that official monitoring is not capturing dangerous levels of pollution, says Friends of the Earth (FOE).

The environmental charity said 70 local groups are now using its testing kits.

One such group is Air Apparent, a project in Bristol monitoring air quality, which has been running their research through the Luftdaten website, an open data project that gives information on how to get monitoring kits and upload their findings online.

Currently three UK sites are using the website, with a further six due to go live soon.

Other local groups who started monitoring including Clean Air Eastbourne in East Sussex and Clean Air Chorley in Lancashire, Residents in Lancing and Shoreham, West Sussex have teamed up to check pollution levels. While monitoring for Clean Air Catford revealed air pollution levels almost double the legal level in some locations in the area, including next to primary schools.