Harnessing the Power of People and Technology to Improve the Quality of Lives
AirBeam is a low-cost, palm-sized air quality instrument that measures hyperlocal concentrations of harmful microscopic particles in the air, known as particulate matter, as well as humidity and temperature.
Who is using Airbeam?
USC Environmental Health Centers
The Community Engagement Program on Health and the Environment (CEPHE) at USC Environmental Health Centers (USCEHC) uses a variety of low-cost air quality instruments and data platforms, including the AirBeam + AirCasting platform, to run participatory air monitoring programs that engage community members around air quality issues where they live, work, and play.
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Who is using Airbeam?
Environmental Law & Policy Center
Chicago residents are hospitalized for asthma at twice the national average. Making matters worse, the rate of asthma hospitalizations is even higher in many of Chicago’s predominately working-class African-American and Latinx neighborhoods.
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Who is using Airbeam?
Airparif
Founded in 1979, Airparif is a French non-profit organization vested by the Ministry of Environment to monitor air quality, forecast pollution episodes, educate the public on the environment, and assess the effectiveness of air pollution mitigation measures in the Paris metropolitan region.
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Who is using Airbeam?
Clean Air Carolina
Clean Air Carolina (CAC), a Charlotte-based non-profit, works to ensure cleaner air quality for all North Carolinians through education and advocacy and by working with their partners to reduce sources of pollution. For the past two years, CAC has been distributing mobile and stationary air quality instruments and providing hands-on training to Charlotte residents as part of their AirKeepers program.
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Who is using Airbeam?
Queensbridge Tech Lab
The Queensbridge Tech Lab (QTL) is a branch of the Queens Public Library located in the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America. QTL offers workshops on and open access to a variety of digital and analog tools, from 3D printing and graphic design to sewing and robotics.
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Who is using Airbeam?
Barry Commoner Center for Health & the Environment
The Barry Commoner Center for Health & the Environment (BCCHE) is an environmental and occupational health research institute at Queens College, City University of New York. The mission of the Center is to identify and rectify environmental and occupational threats to human health.
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AirCasting is an open-source environmental data visualization platform that consists of an Android app and online mapping system.

AirBeam
in the News
From ST. ALBERT TODAY:
“Cheap portable sensors like the AirBeam could help focus efforts to track air quality. If a group were to make a bunch of them available to borrow, parents could wear them while biking or driving around town, and students could use them to track emissions from cars idling at their schools. Eventually, a map could be compiled of pollution hot spots in the city, showing where the problems are and the possible causes of them.”
From POPULAR SCIENCE:
“Low-cost monitors like the AirBeam enable pollution-impacted communities ‘to generate their own data based on their experience of — and knowledge of — pollution in their vicinity,’ she added. ‘It empowers the communities with technical information, often the missing piece in fighting pollution, and assists them in holding regulatory agencies and polluters accountable.’”
From ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR:
“This program provides structure to build environmental health literacy, technical skills, and collaboration between scientists, residents, and environmental justice organizations," said Wendy Gutschow, CEPHE community engagement administrator. "[It] teaches youths that resources exist…gives them the tools and knowledge to influence policy, and encourages them to be active in their communities.”
From ATLANTIC RE:THINK:
“If you wanted to go measure air quality, the instruments run by the state are $15-20,000, and so we said how can we solve this problem, how can we bring down the cost, how can we make it easier to use? And that's what AirCasting was developed to address.”
From ADAFRUIT BLOG:
“Air Keepers as they call them, are not just students. The program is community-based so ordinary citizens can learn about their environment. It’s a great concept bringing together the issues of air quality, health, climate change and the power of advocacy.”
From CITYLAB:
“we’re really looking at personal exposures, what is it like for the person who’s walking to work, at work, at school? What kind of air are they breathing in on a day to day basis?”
From THE NEW YORK TIMES:
“I do believe in the power of the group to change policy,” he said. “If we’re measuring air quality, then we can say, ‘Look, we have real evidence here. You have to do something.’ ”
From OPEN SOURCE STORIES:
“If you have a low cost instrument that's easy to use, then all of a sudden science becomes something that everyday people can do.”
From WNYC:
“It’s less important to necessarily say, ‘What’s the performance of this specific instrument?’ and more important to look at it in the aggregate and say, ‘How can we combine low-cost, citizen-science-collected data with high-end-instrumentation data to improve the accuracy of both?’”
From FAST COMPANY:
“Using AirCasting – an open-source air-quality monitoring and mapping tool from HabitatMap–the teens were able to determine that PM 2.5 concentrations were five times higher along the Gowanus Expressway than the citywide average. And in doing so, they acted as citizen scientists.”