Hey Jude: Air Quality Canary Project

I’m Jude, a Creative Technologist - which means I explore how old or current tech can be given a fresh twist, or how cutting edge tech can be understood more simply - both with the intention of creating new experiences that enrich our lives

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Welcome to the Air Quality Canary Project.

This project started out as an investigation into Air Quality - how a staggering 99% of Londoners live in air so bad, the World Health Organisation considers it unfit to breathe.

It is also a project involving what we call Activist Engineering.

Sure, it has been covered in the news every now and then, but it soon fades back into the background, with few immediate actions being taken to improve the situation.

It is perhaps an issue that it’s hard to a. get access to the data that affects / impacts you, and b. It is not an ‘instant killer’ like a car accident, it’s hard to make headlines, despite the fact that 40,000 deaths per year in the UK are attributed to Air Pollution!

So this project is split into two themes. I truly believe that Engineers I’ve worked with at companies like Dyson, Sugru and LEGO are all nearly sceptical by nature (I consider this is a compliment by the way), and so are not easily duped by greenwashing or hype. So I am happy to be candid about the exact mechanism that brought you to read this blog, in the hope you will realise sometimes the ends justify the means - and hope that you’ll consider building one, certainly follow the other projects coming soon - and please share it with other people who would get a kick out of making one of these gizmos, but also enjoy the science bits...

So why did I make an Air Quality CO2 Canary?

It’s an invitation to act upon what we know. A visual reminder of simple steps we can take to improve life in a perhaps small but consistent manner.

• To get your attention! Social Media algorithms are fickle, superficial things, and so we frankly cannot compete with a White Journal Paper PDF vs a Cat on a Roomba. So if my Air Quality Canary brought you here, then it has succeeded, the silliness was worth it...but please read on - it’ll get way more interesting than puns on canaries and coal miles. It could change your career!

From Nature.

• Now that I have you attention, if you’ll pardon the ruse, I hope that you’ll actually find it mind-blowing as I did, that I was able to quite literally ‘talk myself stupider’ in just 1.5hrs of Zoom calls in my small home office (with windows shut). My wife was not at all shocked by this revelation, but even when not rabbiting on, you’ll respire a considerable amount of CO2 in just 1 hour that you should take seriously. I had assumed my headaches were from staring at a computer, but I now know it is CO2 levels. Data is powerful, even on little things.

There are clinical studies that show that if CO2 rises above 4000ppm you are physiologically less able to perform ‘lateral thinking’ tasks, or to put it another way ‘be creative’ - according to Harvard University. It’s ironic to think that making people sit for prolonged periods in stuffy rooms is exactly how you won’t solve real problems - now we have data to prove it.

• Like any Engineers - I did not stop at this... I went deeper into the ‘rabbithole’ of CO2 science. And as I was reading around this subject, I realised that CO2 monitors were being used in Spain to evaluate Coronavirus risk.

Now, the biologists amongst you will instantly know that ‘you can’t detect a virus in the air with a $30 CO2 sensor!’ - and you’d be right, you cannot. But as a Proxy it is meaningful. CO2 sensors cannot say if the air in a room has been infected, but they can say that it has not been circulated/changed adequately to reduce the risk to a safe level. So Restaurants and Schools are now mandated to have CO2 sensors to make people aware - to open some windows, etc.

I find this amazing that a cheap sensor is still provoking the right behaviour in people, through data, even if it is only a proxy, and a good interim fix until someone does invent a Virus Detector - but this will not be anytime in this decade.

So in summary, the reason I’d encourage you to have a fun ‘artifact’ like a Canary on your desk, is not just to be functionally useful (it’ll remind you that your creativity will truly suffer if you do not open a window and get some fresh air), but just as a photo of your family on your work desk reminds you why you do the grind, we hope the Canary reminds you to keep pushing for better health for our planet. You could of course make one for a local school, or take one into the office. The point is, this is an un-intimidating way to engage people in awareness of an issue, without resorting to scaremongering.

Coming soon

In the next few weeks DesignSpark would love you to sign-up for a Beta Test Kit, and it has not just CO2, but also TVOC, Temp, RH%, Particles, and because it is ‘plug and play’ like LEGO bricks - it will have updates like Formaldehyde and NO2 coming soon. Sign-up to the Newsletter to hear more, or join myself and 11 other wonderful makers on Discord to explore, and find out more on how you can help...more details to follow.

As for now, here are key materials I'll be using in this project.

You can follow the Air Quality Canary Project in these following articles:

• Good Air Canary - Behind The Good Air Canary
• Good Air Canary - Build Guide
• Good Air Canary - Building a Controller