Today’s post is probably the most intriguing of the three innovative solutions we’ll discuss. “Pigeon Air Patrol” is a project initiated by the French tech firm “Plume Labs”, which was carried out in March 2016 in London (Holland, 2015). Literally, it involves putting on little backpacks fitted with air quality sensors on pigeons and sending them out to fly around the area, capturing air quality measurements (Vaughan, 2016). What an adorable thought! 

Members of the public can then tweet their location to the Pigeon Air Patrol Twitter account (@PigeonAir) to get real-time information on air quality via pollution levels of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and volatile compound levels (O’Sullivan, 2016; Holland, 2016). There is also an app “Plume Air Report” and a website tracking the pigeons’ route of travel for users (O’Sullivan, 2016; Holland, 2016). Animal lovers out there need not worry – soft and flexible, the backpacks were made in consultation with an aviary vet and weigh only 25g (O’Sullivan, 2016; Holland, 2016).

The Motivation

This initiative was borne out of the founder Lacombe’s frustration with the lack of transparency in pollution data available for the public (Holland, 2016). 

“Why was it that, as I trained for the Paris marathon in the streets of Paris, I couldn’t get a clear picture of what I breathe – and more importantly, how I could beat air pollution?” – Lacombe, founder 

One of the project’s main aims is thus to democratise information and empower urbanites to make informed decisions on daily practices which directly contribute to climate change. Despite London’s status as a megacity with high vehicular traffic, Londoners are largely unaware of the state of air pollution and tend to underplay its seriousness (Vaughan, 2016). There are days where pollution reaches greater toxicity than in Beijing (Vaughan, 2016). Air pollution is a concern in the UK as long-term exposure causes about 50,000 premature deaths (Font et al., 2019). More specifically, nitrous oxide pollution is particularly a concern as it is estimated to cause 11,000 and 12,000 premature deaths of Londoners annually (O’Sullivan, 2015). 

“Talking to many ordinary people, I realized that many of them didn’t realize how serious the issue was. It’s a major scandal but people don’t really seem to be that bothered. I think this is because despite its grave effects, it’s an invisible, essentially intangible problem.” – Duquesnoy, Project developer (O’Sullivan, 2016, emphasis added)

The Difficulties  

Edwards (2016), an environmental chemist, writes on the inadequacies of these low-cost sensors in monitoring air pollution. He found that the data captured by the sensors were misleading and even totally wrong. Though they responded to the pollutants intended to measure and reflected somewhat accurate ambient concentrations, they also collected data on many other pollutants which resulted in inaccurate readings. Furthermore, the sensors were found to be rather unreliable – 20 commercial air quality sensors which were run in the same location revealed pollution data which differed up to a factor of ten. 

Instrument accuracy aside, public receptiveness also hinders the project’s success. It is a challenge to shift the public’s perception of pigeons as pests and “flying rats” to “airborne eco-warriors” (Edwards, 2016). While researching for this, I could not find any information dated after 2016. It seems that more vigorous research and tests have to be done before something like this can be rolled out long-term, providing reliable information to the public. Here are some potential problems: 

• The very fact that it is an invisible problem (as Duquesnoy mentioned). A common problem with air pollution since we often do not realise gravity until we actually experience the effects of it or if someone near us does.
• Thus, it is tough to encourage people to check air pollution data voluntarily since they cannot see the effects of air pollution. 
• Even if they do check, what do people do with such information? What other accompanying initiatives can be brought in to encourage people to actually utilise this information to combat air pollution? 

Despite these obstacles, I must say, I do like the effort to democratise information on pollution in such an intriguing way! What are your thoughts on this initiative? 

 

References: 

Edwards, P. (2016). Pigeon Air Patrol: a realistic way of monitoring pollution or cooing over unproved science? The Conversation. Available from: https://theconversation.com/pigeon-air-patrol-a-realistic-way-of-monitoring-pollution-or-cooing-over-unproved-science-56315 [Accessed 21 October 2020]. 

Font, A., Guiseppin, L., Blangiardo, M., Ghersi, V. & Fuller, G.W. (2019). A tale of two cities: is air pollution improving in Paris and London? Environmental pollution. 249, 1-12. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.01.040 

Holland, K. (2016). Plume Labs Puts Pigeons on Patrol for Air-Pollution Monitoring. Redshift. Available from: https://redshift.autodesk.com/air-pollution-monitoring/ [Accessed 23 October 2020].  

O’Sullivan, F. (2015). Why Londoners should be way more outraged about air pollution. Bloomberg CityLab. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/citylab-2015-why-london-residents-should-be-way-more-outraged-about-air-pollution [Accessed 21 October 2020]. 

O’Sullivan, F. (2016). Pigeons with backpacks are fighting air pollution in London. Bloomberg CityLab. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-15/london-s-latest-weapon-against-pollution-Pigeon-air-patrol [Accessed 21 October 2020].

Vaughan, A. (2016). Pigeon patrol takes flight to tackle London’s air pollution crisis. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/14/pigeon-patrol-takes-flight-to-tackle-londons-air-pollution-crisis [Accessed 21 October 2020].