Air quality meters to schools

The handover took place on March 5, 2020 in one of the award-winning schools, the Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar Primary School. The other four winners are the Gyula Gulner Primary School, the Kandó Tér Primary School, the Kapocs Hungarian-English Bilingual Primary School and the Táncsics German Nationality Primary School.

The schools were provided with a portable device called Atmotube PRO, which can measure the mass of small particles in the PM1, PM2.5, PM10 size ranges, as well as temperature, humidity, air pressure and the mass of VOCs (volatile organic compounds). These types of devices participate also in the Clean Air Action Group’s Project of Residential Measurements for Clean Air, where parents and grandparents can rent the tool for 10 days if they agree to measure the air regularly near their children or grandchildren.

There are plans to install a permanent air pollution measuring device in the winner schools, where the technical conditions enable it. The permanent device is a development of the German Community Initiative for active citizen measurements Luftdaten, which has grown into a movement, and measures the mass of small air pollutant particles in the PM2.5 and PM10 ranges. This tool is also equipped with a temperature and humidity measuring sensor, which are important for the interpretation of the measurement results. The device is accessible to anyone, can even be assembled from parts, and a Hungarian language website is also available for it.

Devices that are not deployed in schools due to technical reasons will be placed in the window of buildings belonging to the district municipality, and students will have access to the data as if they had the equipment in their schools, as devices with increasing coverage and their measurement results across Europe are available to anyone.

Translated by Gábor Lakos