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Brighton and Hove City Council has led the installation of a network of 50 air quality monitors in Sussex and launched a real time information portal to display the data.
The council has placed 40 of the Zephyr monitors from EarthSense in the city, with others going to locations in the Horsham and Newhaven areas.
Locations include Brighton city centre, Shoreham and Newhaven ports, hill slopes and valley bottoms, parks and 12 air quality management areas (AQMAs).
The company said the monitors will measure the pollutants hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric oxide (NO), ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM1, PM2.5, PM10), as well as providing ambient measurements for temperature, pressure and relative humidity.
The data will be fed into the Brighton and Hove and Sussex Real Time Air Quality Portal website, which was launched in October. It provides the public with free access to up-to-date information and is aimed at raising awareness of the impact that vehicle and gas boiler emissions, and smoke from log burners and fireplaces, can have on air quality in the city.
Strategy and assessments
It is part of Brighton and Hove’s wider strategy to improve air quality and tackle the burning of solid fuels, which takes in its existing six air quality AQMAs and five smoke control areas (SCAs).
The Sussex network has been deployed to complement other air quality and net zero assessment methodologies such as regulatory standards, automatic monitors, diffusion tubes, emission inventories and the detailed dispersion model for the city with local source apportionment output.
Cllr Tim Rowkins, cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said: “This new network of air quality monitors is a big step forward. It will enable us to build a much more detailed understanding of what kinds of pollution are happening where and at what times.
“This will be extremely useful as we begin to take action to address particulate pollution from wood burners and open fireplaces, which have become increasingly popular in recent years.
“The impact on public health is too great to ignore, and there is a lot of work to be done, both locally and nationally, to raise awareness.”
The project has been funded by the council’s Carbon Neutral Fund and an air quality grant from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
