Chemical sensors for outdoor air quality monitoring

Abstract

Air pollution is a global threat leading to large impacts on human health and ecosystems. Emissions and concentrations have increased in many areas and worldwide. In some areas of Europe, air quality remains very poor, despite reduced emissions and concentrations in the environment. Currently the most important environmental risk to human health is air pollution, and Europeans are considered the second biggest concern for the environment, right after climate change. Major problems related to air quality have an impact on human health, and in particular on respiratory diseases. In response to the problems of poor air quality, there is political, media and public interest in air quality issues. The growing public influence over air pollution challenges, including ongoing civic scientific initiatives involved in supporting air quality monitoring and targeted initiatives to raise public awareness and change behavior, has led to increasing support and demand for measures to improve air quality. Due to increasing air pollution, great efforts are being made to develop various chemical methods and chemical sensors used to measure air quality. Cheaper gas-based sensors based on the Arduino system are available today. Given their simplicity and given that they are more cost-effective, these sensors have proven to be very useful in some situations where it is necessary to detect certain gases in the air in a very short time. Several chemical methods have been developed that can also detect certain gases in the air. In this paper, only some methods by which gases and particles can be detected will be mentioned.