Air Quality

Review the following steps that you can take to reduce pollution and become a clean air change agent:

Steps to Reduce Pollution

Select three of these items or come up with some of your own. Implement your pollution reducing steps at your home for one week. Write a short paper about the changes you have made. Were the steps you selected easy to do? Do you plan to continue cleaner air options?

reduce the pollution in your city!!!

Take a photograph of a street in your community. What could be changed on that street to help the air quality? Are there many trees, flowers, bushes, or green spaces? Is it easy to walk on that street or ride a bike? Are there places to lock up a bike? Draw a plan of two blocks on that street showing where you would make improvements. Sketch a section of the street to further illustrate your ideas.

For one week, check the newspaper for your AQI or air quality index. The AQI is a measure of the pollution in the air. AQI uses colors to show how clean the air is on a particular day in a particular place; the color green records clean air. Yellow, red, and orange record degrees of polluted air. The Air Quality Index uses numbers from 0 to 500. These numbers are used to decide the AQI color. On days measuring less than 100, the air is clean. If the air is dirtier, the numbers get bigger. On days measuring more than 100, the air can be bad for you to breathe. You can also check the live AIRNow adding your zipcode. Make a chart for seven days recording the air quality. Each day be sure to spend time outdoors and breathe. Record your body’s responses when breathing while walking, biking, and running. Do you have good breathing days and bad breathing days? Are they related to the AQI?

Be aware of the air you breathe!

The freshest air in most parts of the world, is the air that is outside and moving with the cycles of the earth. Understanding that, it is important to bring fresh air inside where people live, work, exercise, create, and enjoy life. Open or operable windows are the best solution. Operable windows are mandated in many green building agendas. If the building is completely closed, there are codes for air conditioning that require a mixture of fresh air to be circulated with the existing air within the building. Research what this percentage is per building occupancy. Make a chart of the occupancy type and the amount of fresh air needed. Do you think this is enough?

Once you become knowledgeable about air quality, it is time to inspect the quality of the air that you breathe for more than 90% of your life. Monitoring indoor air quality is a revealing indicator of how healthy the air that live, learn, and work in is. Check out Air Lab’s recent monitoring of air quality in Chicago. AirLAB
Want to find out how you can start cleaning the air in your home? First, it probably starts with the air quality outside of your house. If you live in a neighborhood with industry, chances are the air quality is affected by the industrial discharges. You can check the air quality with an air quality monitor, or with the data shared on this AirCompare Map. As for changing behaviors, start with taking your shoes off when you come inside. This simple task stops heavy metal, dirt, and toxic chemicals from entering your home. Think of walking on the sidewalk where pesticide signs are mounted in lawns. You are walking on poisonous chemicals which you can bring into your own home. Other contributors to unhealthy air in homes are fragrances, cooking fumes, off-gassing of volatile particulate matter from fire-protected textiles and carpets. The best way to keep indoor air healthy is to let fresh clean air in on a regular basis, even in the wintertime if possible. This refreshes the stale air. Cleaning regularly is also key using nontoxic, simple cleaners, like vinegar and baking soda. Keep your house clean!

Where in the world is the air clean to breathe? Take a look at the World Health Organization’s series of maps by country, grid, and city. What pattern do you see evolving? Annual concentrations of fine particulates of less 10 microns in diameter constitute a base measure for polluted air. Notice that urban areas, and particularly urban areas of poorer countries, have air quality below the WHO’s standards for clean air. Start with your city. Check your city’s air quality. Choose a country. Map its areas of air quality concern and research at least three contributors to the accumulation of fine particulates.

• Air quality can be reduced by
  • Heat
  • Cars
  • Paint
  • All of these
• To help keep myself healthy I can
  • help reduce pollution.
  • ride my bike instead of taking a car.
  • play outside when the weather is cooler, taking it easy when it's hot.
  • all of these
• Vegetation can
  • be damaged by poor air quality
  • help improve air quality
  • be used as a cleaner fuel
  • All of these
• Which of these steps you are taking to reduce pollution?
  • Recycling
  • Gardening
  • Biking
  • Preventing forest fires
• Which of the following careers deal with air quality?
  • Weather person
  • Garbage person
  • Landscape designer
  • President