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Air pollution isn’t something most of us spend time thinking about. But considering the impact on our health, we should probably be checking it at least as frequently as we check the weather. Well, now there’s an app for that!
Plume Air Report began life in Paris, where Plume Labs founder Romain Lacombe claims life expectancy is shortened by six months due to harmful particulates. And now the easy-to-use and smartly visualised pollution-ometer has gone global, with 3,000 Londoners downloading it already.
Its pollution forecasts are compiled using hourly data from sensors around cities, monitoring levels of nitrogen dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide levels. Currently the app collects data from 11,000 sensors in 30 different countries.
We’d heard it was easy to use, so thought we’d give it a go in London.
It was as simple as picking a city, after which we were presented with this screen of stats and a cloud with a concerned face. We assumed that wasn’t great…
A lot of those icons seemed a bit baffling at first. But a quick tap on the information icon explained things soon enough.
First up, what did that worrisome cloud mean? Thankfully the app provided us with a colour-coded pollution chart.
So London’s not got the ideal blue smiley face, but it’s not as bad as it could be. According to the app, our greyish-brown colour means “the air is polluted above yearly WHO (World Health Organisation) recommendations” and that “long-term exposure constitutes a health risk”.
The stats below the cloud (temperature, weather, UV, time, date) should all be pretty familiar.
Then there’s the wavy line with the big yellow ball. You can hold and drag that left and right to see how the pollution will change over the day.
As you might expect in London, the pollution peaks around the morning and evening rush hours (diesel vehicles are often cited as a big cause of air pollution), and is at its lowest in the early hours of the morning (when the fewest buses and cabs are ploughing the streets).
The last four icons show a person running, another cycling, a mother with a baby, and a table under an umbrella (to represent al fresco dining). Again, these are colour-coded, so we had to quickly look it up.
Green means you can enjoy the activity to your heart’s content.
Orange means the activity should be carried out with care.
Red means the activity could very quickly be bad for your health.
London was all orange. Which at least means the lazy pace of our weekly jogs is saving us from too much pollution.
But the forecast fun didn’t end there! We swiped left on the concerned cloud and got an actual number representing London’s pollution levels.
And because most people won’t have an immediate point of reference for this “Plume Index” (which conforms to international standards and WHO guidelines), we’re also given the yearly average for the specific city.
So we now know the air outside our office is a bit more polluted than average. We also know London is somewhere in the middle of that “concerned cloud” 20 to 50 range on the Plume Index.
Another swipe takes us through to the actual levels of various particulates. Helpful if you know you’re susceptible to certain types of pollution.
The particulates shown are the most prevalent or dangerous in the current city. In London’s case that’s nitrogen dioxide and ozone, plus a reading for something called “particulate matter”.
Of course the app isn’t just useful for London. The “add city” page includes 21 UK cities – from Aberdeen to Wigan. Sadly none of them are up and running quite yet.
Instead we compared London to some other big global rivals. Firstly London’s American equivalent, NYC.
Still “moderate pollution”, but a quick swipe left found New York at a much lower 20 on the Plume Index (which is why all those activities are green still).
Finally, in our search for a city with truly clean air, we looked at Berlin. Our hunch proved well-founded, as the smug little blue cloud flashed up.
Plume Air Report is available on Android and iOS, and was launched on Thursday for Apple Watch. Plume Labs is funded by the French government and its Agoranov incubator.
