Community Air

The Community Air Monitoring Project

Integrating Novel Sensor Technology and Community Science to Address Environmental Injustice in California

The Community Air Project is a multi-campus research initiative funded by the University of California Office of the President's Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) grant. This project unites researchers from four UC institutions with community partners to address critical gaps in our understanding of air pollution. While regional air quality is monitored, localized hotspots of pollution, particularly in communities facing environmental injustice, often go undetected by existing regulatory networks. This project directly confronts this challenge by developing and deploying a new generation of air quality sensors.

The goal of this project is to collaborate with communities to develop and deploy novel, low-cost air quality monitors to measure the two major kinds of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), metallic compounds (MC) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in real time. These HAPs have been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes. Our approach is a community engaged one in which our community partners serve as collaborators throughout the research process from conceptualization, data collection through dissemination of findings. Finally, a novel contribution of this project is the use of these new instruments in communities with high environmental injustice across California.