About Air Quality

Air. These three little letters together make up what is an essential ingredient for life. We can live without water for days, but only for minutes without air.

But what is the quality of this life-giving medium that we all take for granted?

In the developed world at least, we have choices including for example, the water we drink. We can choose to drink our water from the tap, or if we perceive it be of better quality, we can purchase it in bottles instead.

This is not so with air. The vast majority of the world’s population has no choice about the air they breathe and tens of millions of people die each year because of poor air quality.

Even in the UK, fifty thousand people or more are known to die prematurely because of air pollution. Along with obesity, smoking and cancer, air pollution is in fact one of the UK’s biggest killers.

Awareness about air pollution is growing day by day as are the number of diseases and symptoms that are caused by or exacerbated by poor air quality, but even now, in the 21st century, many people are oblivious to the facts and true health impacts of modern day urban air pollution.

Unlike the smogs and “pea-soupers” of the 1950’s, modern day air pollution is largely invisible. You can’t see it, smell it or taste it, but it ranks in the top 5 killers and costs the UK economy billions of pounds per year in lost productivity and places enormous strains on the ~health system.

Enviro Technology Services provides scientific instrumentation, systems and services to help government, local authorities, industry, academia, agencies and consultants to accurately and reliably quantify the concentrations of various dangerous air pollutants so that data can be produced and made publically available.

To measure is to know, and with knowledge comes power. Power to make things better, to help clean up the air in our towns and cities and to ensure that our right for clean air is upheld.

But is enough being done? How clean is the air where you live? What are the health impacts of poor air quality and what can you do to help improve it?