What We Breathe As We Commute: From the Perspective of a Developing Country

Abstract

Air pollution is a serious threat to public health. The city residents often spend significant time in public transports owing to long traffic tailbacks. So, the air quality inside public transports is an important factor that needs to be considered for the welfare of city residents. In this paper, we study the air quality inside public transports in a metropolitan city from the perspective of a developing country. To capture the diversity of city life, we consider the variation in traffic pattern and public transports, and analyze the data in temporal and spatial domain. Our custom-built sensing module collects data at regular intervals and detects the presence of pollutants above recommendation level. Our temporal analysis shows that concentration of air pollutants inside different public transports do not remain consistent in peak and off-peak hours. Our analysis also reveals that public transports with lower fares are more exposed to air pollutants than those with higher fares.