Fort Collins students testing Wearable Air Quality Sensors

Blue skies and good air quality. Image credit: Flickr/Fort Collins

 
A partnership between Colorado State University and fifth graders at Rivendell Elementary School in Fort Collins formed as a way to work on finding new ways to measure air quality. Youth are the most susceptible to poor air quality, which can lead to asthma and other respiratory issues. The partnership had the students test a tool called the Automated Microenvironmental Air Sampler (A-MAS), which uses a GPS and an accelerometer to measure air quality each time the wearer enters a new environment. Using a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CSU was able to study the air quality of different environments students enter each day. While not an asthma detector necessarily, the tool could help pinpoint problematic environments to help those with asthma, for example.

For more information about the program, read the article at KUNC.