Love Lambeth Air provided local people with the materials and support required to collect measurements for nitrogen dioxide across a number of streets in Lambeth, providing a detailed picture of air quality in their local area. Every month for a six month period the diffusion tubes were changed and sent to the lab for analysis with the results being made available on Mapping for Change’s Community Maps.
Background
Lambeth council, in partnership with Mapping for Change, provided diffusion tubes to residents and businesses to measure nitrogen dioxide outside their home or office over the course of six months from November 2016 until April 2017.
Currently there are only three static air quality monitoring stations across Lambeth borough. So this project provided local people with the chance to know what the air quality is like in their neighbourhood.
Every month participants changed the diffusion tube outside their home or office and returned the old tube to Mapping for Change. Mapping for Change sent the tubes to the lab for analysis and the results were made available on their Community Maps website.
At the start of the project there was a workshop to explain how a diffusion tube worked and a demonstration of how to change the tube each month. There was another workshop six months later to discuss the monitoring results (you can read more about this feedback event here). During the feedback event, there was a discussion on ways to help improve air quality and reduce personal exposure and explore steps for further action.
You can read a summary of the main findings or learn more with the final project report.
If you would like to find out more please email the team at: info@mappingforchange.org.uk
Feature image (CC BY 4.0) Essie
Related Projects
WeGovNow
WeGovNow is a three year research and innovation project focusing on civic participation in local government. It aims to change the relationship between citizens and local governments, transforming the citizen’s role from customer into partner. This is to be achieved with the development of a single community engagement platform, where citizens can interact with their governments and participate in local decision-making.
D-NOSES - Tackling Odour Pollution Across Europe
D-NOSES is a three-year EU funded research project which aims to provide a solution to the largely neglected issue of odour pollution, changing the traditional top-down approach for a bottom-up one. The lack of regulation from authorities around odour pollution is mainly due to it being difficult to reliably measure and the potential solutions being costly to implement.
Science in the City
Science in the City is a project that is being carried out with residents in the Barbican and Mansell Street, in the City of London. Residents are using low-tech tools to measure Nitrogen Dioxide and particulates.