Four years ago, I was coughing through a Beijing winter and wanted some clean air. But all the purifiers I could find cost hundreds of dollars, so I strapped a filter to a fan I had at home and made my first DIY purifier. It wasn’t pretty, but I tested it with a laser […]
Author: Paddy Robertson
Paddy graduated in aeronautical engineering from Bristol University, and now runs Smart Air's operations from Beijing. He's an advocate for open data, free information and transparent business.
Winter is Coming
Another year, another winter. As winter arrives in Beijing and soon in Shanghai, I got to wondering: how much worse is winter air in Beijing? To get to the bottom of it, I analyzed the last eight years of US Embassy PM 2.5 data for Beijing and Shanghai. I found that the capital’s air has […]
How accurate are common particle counters?
When I started Smart Air in 2013, I wanted to buy an air quality monitor. I had basically two options. I could buy a US$260 Dylos or spend thousands of dollars on the crazy expensive particle counters. Since then, the market has exploded with new air quality monitors as cheap as 99 RMB. But are they […]
US Embassy Beijing reads AQI of 0! Are the summer skies always clear?
Map of today’s pollution levels across China – 9th September 2016. Source：http://aqicn.org What a glorious day in Beijing! Right now, the US Embassy in Beijing is giving a PM2.5 value of 0. Is summer normally this good? And what’s the pollution like in other parts of China right now? (Short answer: not good! Long answer: read […]