HabitatMap Blog

Wildfire Smoke Is Getting Worse — Here's What You Need to Know

Think Your Indoor Air Is Clean? Check Again.

Most people picture air pollution as something that happens outside—traffic exhaust, factory smoke, wildfire haze drifting in from somewhere else. And the outdoor picture is gen...

AirBeam Mini Upgrade: More Reliable, Accurate & Versatile

First launched in 2014, HabitatMap’s AirBeam air quality monitor has evolved over more than a decade and four models to become more reliable, more accurate, more versatile, more...

When Fresh Scents Turn Toxic: How Candles and Incense Impact Your Health

Candles, incense, and air fresheners are beloved for creating ambiance and masking odors, but many of these seemingly harmless products release hidden pollutants into your indoor air.

What Do Those Colored Dots Mean? Understanding the Air Quality Index (AQI)

Have you ever opened the AirCasting map, seen those brightly colored dots, and wondered what they mean? Each dot shows the local air quality, scored on the Air Quality Index (AQI). Once you can read the colors, you can make smarter, healthier choices about the air around you.

Breathing Easier: How Green Spaces Shape Air Quality in Jordan’s Cities

In Jordan’s semi-arid cities like Amman and Irbid, green spaces do more than offer recreation—they help improve public health by reducing pollution. Researchers used the AirBeam to ask: do greener neighborhoods have cleaner air?

Louisiana’s Ban on Community Air Monitoring is an Attack on Science & Free Speech

Louisiana legislators passed a “million-dollar muzzle,” which barred the use of community-gathered air-quality data to advocate for pollution control and enforcement, with fines as high as $1 million per violation.

AirBeam Mini vs. PurpleAir: The Clear Choice for Clean Air Monitoring

When it comes to air quality monitoring, there’s no shortage of options, but not all monitors are built with you in mind. If you’re looking for a monitor that’s accurate, mobile...

The Empowering Virtues of Citizen Science: Claiming Clean Air in Brussels

The AirCasting platform is used by individuals, communities, and institutions around the world to measure air pollution. In a recently published article, Nicola da Schio, a post...

Evaluation Proves AirBeam3 Most Accurate AirBeam Ever

During the winter and spring of 2022, South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) evaluated the field performance of the AirBeam3 against two Federal Equivalent Method ...

Breathe Better With AirCasting Actions

AirCasting Actions is a free resource for helping you and your community actively understand the air you are breathing and start taking action to improve it. Whether you’re a co...

AirBeam3 Technical Specifications, Operation & Performance

AirBeam is a low-cost, palm-sized air quality instrument that measures hyperlocal concentrations of harmful microscopic particles in the air.

To Improve Children's Health, Empower Communities

Air quality is not normally one of the metrics taken into account by planners, architects, and developers when deciding what to build and where to build it but it should be. Kno...

NYC Community Organizations Use AirCasting to Study Hyperlocal Air Quality

New York City's official air monitors are too sparse to capture how pollution changes from block to block. Here is how community organizations mapped their own air, and what they found.

New York Times Reports on Personal Pollution Exposures Using AirBeam2

In reporting their story, “Who Gets to Breathe Clean Air in New Delhi?”, The New York Times selected the AirBeam2 as their primary tool for measuring personal exposures to parti...

Government Measured Air Quality Data Now Available

Governments throughout the world employ scientists and technicians to operate and maintain networks of expensive and precise air quality instruments. The measurements from these...

AirBeam2 “Quite Accurate” According to Newly Released Performance Evaluation

During the summer and fall of 2018, South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) evaluated the field performance of the AirBeam2 against three Federal Equivalent Method ...

Raspberry Pi AirBeam Data Logger

Every semester I tell my students at Medgar Evers College that to be a great research chemist, you need to be a bit of everything: a bit plumber, a bit electrician, and especial...

Using Community Science & Open Source Tools to Promote Community Health

UPROSE staffers Jason Gomez and Brian Gonzalez - seen above walking the streets of Sunset Park, Brooklyn - discuss how they used the AirBeam + AirCasting to measure air pollutio...

AirBeam2 Technical Specifications, Operation & Performance

Hardware SpecificationsWeight: 5 ouncesParticle Sensor: Plantower PMS7003Relative Humidity Sensor: Honeywell HIH-5030-001Temperature Sensor: Microchip MCP9700T-E/TTBluetooth: No...

Adding an NO2 sensor to the AirBeam

Some months ago, I took part in the Mobicitair experiment led by ATMO Auvergne Rhône Alpes, an agency that monitors air quality in southeastern France Mobitcitair uses the AirBe...

Can an App Make Our Cities More Breathable?

A volunteer with the social justice non-profit El Puente, measures the air quality inside a community garden located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. El Puente describes their use of ...

Leveraging AirBeam Data to Inform Policy Decisions

Garbage zoning will dramatically reduce vehicle miles traveled by eliminating overlapping routes while serving the same business customers. Currently there are blocks in Manhatt...

Livestream Your AirBeam

You can now livestream your AirBeam! To begin, visit the Google Play Store and make sure you are running the most up to date version of the AirCasting app. Then launch the AirCa...

1,000 AirBeams Worldwide

With over 1,000 AirBeams in use worldwide and more than 100 million data points, the AirCasting platform is now one of the largest open-source databases of community-collected a...

Reprogram Your AirBeam

The AirBeam - HabitatMap’s low-cost, open-source air quality instrument for measuring PM2.5 - can be reprogrammed to meet the specific needs of your monitoring initiative. Don’t...

Watch Our Kickstarter Video & Get An AirBeam

After more than 3 years of research and development and 6 prototypes, we finally cracked the code on bringing a low-cost, portable, accurate, open-source air quality monitor to ...

AirBeam Technical Specifications, Operation & Performance

Hardware SpecificationsWeight: 7 ouncesParticle Sensor: Shinyei PPD60PVTemperature & Relative Humidity Sensor: MaxDetect RH03Bluetooth: Nova MDCS42, Version 2.1+EDRMicrocont...

AirCasting Youth

AirCasting Youth is an educational program for high school students that teaches how to build AirCasting air quality instruments, develop air quality monitoring plans, utilize t...

The AirCasting App Gets a Makeover

We launched the AirCasting app in December 2011. Over the past two years we've rolled out a slew of new features but never had a chance to rethink the user interface.  That is u...

Air Quality Scientist Goes AirCasting (Part 2): Smokers Beware!

Last week, I wrote about AirCasting with my Car-Neph. This week, I want to tell you about my Backpack-Neph.The below image provides an overhead view of the Puget Sound Clean Air...

Air Quality Scientist Goes AirCasting (Part 1)

I've worked at the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) in Seattle for a little over ten years with a team that has monitored air quality here since 1967. We focus on measuring ...

Evaluating Low-Cost Gas Sensors

One of the major challenges facing air quality scientists and citizen scientists is the dearth of information available regarding the performance of low-cost gas sensors. Though...

Make Your Own AirCasting Particle Monitor

Join us Tuesday, October 8th for the third installment of Make Magazine's Urban Sensor Hack. The event takes place on Google Hangout and is free and open to the public. During o...

AirCasting: Education Edition

In the spring we had lots of fun teaching students how to make AirCasting compatible air monitors and luminescent accessories.  For details on these educational programs, along ...

More AirCasting Air Quality Monitors

It's been eight months since we released the DIY guide for the first AirCasting compatible air monitor. Since then we've been busy evaluating the performance of a variety of dif...

AirCasting & HabitatMap in the News!

The New York Times followed us around while we went AirCasting, then wrote a story and made a video about it. The story is excellent in that it covers not only AirCasting but a ...

My Air, My Health Challenge Update

We submitted our solution to the My Air, My Health Challenge judges a few weeks back. We won't know who won until they make the official announcement at the Health Datapalooza I...

Go With the Flow: Investigate Your Water System!

We are delighted to introduce Go With the Flow, part of HabitatMap’s MapThink Toolkit series. Go With the Flow is a short-term group research project that empowers high school s...

Now Streaming Data from the Zephyr BioHarness 3

We're happy to announce an update to the AirCasting app that includes connectivity for the Zephyr BioHarness 3. The BioHarness connects to the AirCasting app over Bluetooth, ena...

AirCasting from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Mayeta Clark, an intern at the New York Times video desk, contacted me a few months back to discuss AirCasting. I suggested that rather than do a sit-down interview, she capture...

My Air, My Health Challenge

We're delighted to be finalists for the EPA/NIEHS/HHS sponsored My Air, My Health Challenge</. Together with researchers and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University and New...

What Goes Down Must Come Up: Addressing Vapor Intrusion in New York City

Vapor intrusion describes the process whereby volatile chemicals migrate from contaminated soil and/or groundwater and enter buildings through cracks or perforations in slabs or...

AirCasting Goes West Coast for Urban Prototyping

We had a blast last weekend in downtown San Francisco exhibiting AirCasting as part of the Urban Prototyping festival organized by the Grey Area Arts Foundation. We let folks ch...

Lighten Up! Introducing AirCasting Luminescence

We've just released the step-by-step instruction manual detailing how to make your own AirCasting luminescent apparel. AirCasting Luminescence uses a IOIO microcontroller to con...

Meet the AirCasting Air Monitor

We’re excited to announce the release of the step-by-step instruction manual for the AirCasting Air Monitor. This handy guide has all the information you need to build your very...

AirCasting in Action, Now with 500% More Sensors!

This evening I clipped an AirCasting Air Monitor to my backpack, strapped a Zephyr heart rate monitor to my chest, and set out to find a good place to measure bad air. Conjectur...

Come EcoHack with AirCasting!

Join AirCasting at EcoHack NYC this weekend, 4/20 - 4/21. I'll be giving an ignite talk Friday night to rally contributors for Saturday's Hackathon. I've posted my ignite talk a...

Apps & Sensors for Air Pollution

On March 25th I flew down to North Carolina to share AirCasting at the "Apps & Sensors for Air Pollution" workshop hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The work...

AirCasting Gets a New & Improved Maps Interface

Have a look at AirCasting's new and improved maps interface.  You can now perform a variety of targeted searches on the CrowdMap and Sessions map, permalink your map view, and s...

Greenpeace Poison Gas Disaster Map!

This scary map from Greenpeace maps U.S. chemical plants and their potential poison gas cloud fallout zones.  Like the EPA greenhouse gas map I blogged about a few weeks back, t...

EPA Releases Greenhouse Gas Map

The EPA recently released an interactive online  greenhouse gas map that includes emissions data  for individual facilities. I've been following the evolution of the EPA's mappi...

AirCasting in Action

After taking time this weekend and yesterday to do more testing, we officially launched AirCasting today.  Below I've described a couple of my recent sessions to illustrate AirC...

Set Your Mic Max to Record Accurate Sound Level Readings

Different phones have different “microphone maximums”: the maximum sound level, as measured in decibels (dB), that the microphone can record. For most phones this is around 100 ...

Craft a Windscreen for Your Phone Mic

Most sound level meters come equipped with a foam windscreen that fits over the top of the microphone, protecting it from wind interference. If you plan to use your phone mic fo...

AirCasting is Live!

We released the AirCasting app to the Android Market late last night and the AirCasting website went live today!  After spending the weekend testing and contributing data to the...