Here they go, the first 4 voluntering back packers in Eindhoven:

4 volunteers walk 5 days their daily routine with measurement equipment

4 volunteers walk 5 days their daily routine with measurement equipment

The backpack is stacked with measurement equipment that determines their GPS location and exposure to air pollution, including ultrafinedust.

The experiment is organized by the dutch technology institute called TNO together with the health risk assesment research authority (IRAS) of the University of Utrecht and facilitated by Local AiREAS in Eindhoven.

What do we hope to achieve?

1. The real air pollution exposure in- and outdoors of local citizens.

Today AiREAS in Eindhoven measures on 35 fixed locations the air pollution in real time. We use modelling to determine the expected exposure of individuals throughout the city. But is this correct? We will be able to check this through this “walking” exposure test.

We ask the backpackers to also visit the fixed positions of UFP (ultrafinedust) measurement to see if the measurements are the same at the same time and GPS location (validation).

AiREAS measures only the outdoor air quality, not indoor. During the health research project called POP we asked people about their lifestyle. Surprisingly most people spend 95% of their time indoors. The exposure indoors is therefore extremely relevant. It is also interesting to compare indoor en outdoor measurement to see if their are strong deviations and similarities.

2. Three groups of “different” people

The experiment is walked three times, 5 days each, during the month of june 2015. Each time by different people coming from three different groups in society:

  1. People who participated already in the POP health research. We can compare the new data with the data collected earlier this year.
  2. People who are actively involved in AiREAS or the STIR Foundation due to their residence near pollution factors (e.g. airport, high density traffic, industrial areas…). We expect to see deviations from the first group due to the geographical location of their residence
  3. People who work in Eindhoven in high tech and travel every day between home and work.

The measurement takes 5 days which have been chosen to be from wednesday till monday. This gives also insight on exposure difference during weekly routines and weekend. June is a month of sunshine and different pollution patterns (BBQ, traffic, inversion, etc). We hope to see these patterns in the read outs.

Packed with technology

Packed with technology

It will take a few months to provide individual feedback and analyze the data.