Excuse me.
Man.
What causes us to sneeze? Well, a lot of things. It could be dust or pollen or smoke.
And size does matter. Did you know that super fine particles could also affect your health?
Hi, my name is Autumn and today I would like to talk to you about something called fine particulate matter
as well as show you an activity that you can do from home to test the air quality near you.
This activity comes from NASA's Earth Observatory for Kids and the "Air Pollution: Seeing Small Specks from Space" issue.
You can find that issue online at earthobservatory.nasa.gov/eokids.
It's free. You can download it as a PDF or you can print it off. It's up to you.
Now back to air pollution.
Different particles can float around in our air, they can land and the wind
can blow them around and then they can get into our noses and cause us to sneeze.
Or they can get into our eyes and make them all red and itchy.
It's really a bother.
Fine particulate matter is even more dangerous.
It is so tiny. It is smaller than the width of a strand of human hair.
That's really tiny.
Those tiny particles can get into our lungs and then into our bloodstream and cause all sorts of health problems such as an asthma attack or even lung cancer.
That is why clear skies and clean air is so important. NASA does study air pollution from space.
Satellites encircling our globe take a look at the Sun, the light from the Sun, and how it is scattered or blocked by particles in our atmosphere.
You can read all about this in the issue "Air Pollution: Seeing Small Specks from Space."
Today I did want to show you an activity that you can do to test the air quality near you.
For that activity, you will need the following:
Some paper plates.
Petroleum jelly
A spoon or a knife to scoop out and spread the petroleum jelly
and a magnifying glass.
Now all you need to do is take your petroleum jelly
and use a spoon or a knife and scoop some out.
This is really sticky.
The reason we're using petroleum jelly is because it is so sticky. We are creating a sensor on our paper plate.
And the petroleum jelly will collect any particles that are floating around in our air.
I want to create a couple of these sensors on so I can test different areas.
My first sensor is done. As you can see, I've spread petroleum jelly all over it.
And now I'm going to do my second one, because I want to be able to test a room in my home as well as the air in my garden.
You can decide which areas would like to test with your sensor.
You could compare the kitchen to the bedroom, or the dining room to the bathroom.
Or perhaps even the boy's room versus the girl's room, see which one's cleaner, and which one's dirtier.
So I think I'm set. Petroleum jelly on my paper plates.
Now I need to set them somewhere.
If you are going to place them in a garden where it's possible wind might kick them up, you're going to want to secure them.
In our activity we suggest doing that with a brick and some duct tape.
So you would just take duct tape and put it on the back of your plate and tape it to a brick.
I unfortunately did not have those materials, so instead I am using a clip to clip my paper plate to a tomato plant area.
So that is how I'm going to hold it down.
But you can do what works for you.
Then all you need to do is be patient. You need to wait 24 hours.
After those 24 hours are up, you'll be able to take your magnifying glass and see what your sensors picked up.
So, give it a go. And then let's check out what happened with our sensors.
I went ahead and did my sensors in advance so that I can show you some results right now.
So I did place one of my sensors in a room in my home, and I also then placed the other one in my garden using a clip to hold it into place.
Let's take a look.
Here is my indoor sensor. Looks pretty good, but I'm going to use my magnifying glass
because, remember, dust can be pretty tiny, as well as other particulate matter.
So let's take a look-see.
Okay, well, I see dust.
Not too bad. But definitely see some dust and then some fibers.
It looks like maybe some fibers from my clothes got into the sensor, but not too bad.
My outdoor test is another story.
Can you see that?
Yes, looks a little yellow, there's bugs, and using my magnifying glass I see a lot of dust of all different sizes.
It could be pollen, it could be dust, it could be mold, it could be smoke. There's a ton of stuff in here.
And actually that makes a lot of sense.
When I compare these two, my indoor space has cleaner air than my outdoor space.
I do live near a roadway and so cars driving by kick up dust and other particulate matter, and this gets into the air near me.
This sensor here demonstrates that my outdoor air isn't as clean as my indoor air.
Now, when you do this test, you might find that your indoor space, maybe had more dust than I did.
That could mean that maybe your vents need a good cleaning or that you need to replace them.
That this is a good test that you can do to find out how clean the air is around you.
I hope you enjoyed this activity.
Remember, you can find it and more like it at NASA's Earth Observatory for Kids, just go to earthobservatory.nasa.gov/eokids.
Thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you next time. Bye bye!