Every year, Bangkok experiences seasonal haze pollution during the cooler months.
As a father of two girls, this concerns me
and makes me question how we can solve this problem so that our kids can breathe better air in the future.
We’ve developed a portable air quality monitoring device.
We’ve used our air purifier’s sensing technology and a GPS module and put it inside this backpack.
The two sensors are a particulate sensor, which uses laser technology to detect PM2.5.
The second sensor is a gas sensor and it can detect NO₂ - Nitrogen Dioxide, and VOCs - Volatile Organic Compounds.
The Dyson backpack detects and measures air quality, and I used it every day during two phases in the past year to better understand the air we are breathing.
The first phase was between July and October 2020. At that time, the air quality in Bangkok was still good and no haze was seen.
However, during the second phase in January 2021, we could see clearly that PM2.5 returned to Bangkok and covered most areas of the city.
I believe that the data collected is important to help people visualise the differences in air quality between both time periods. Let’s have a look!
Hi, it’s good to meet you. My name is Michael and I’m a design engineer at Dyson.
This is the first image of the results that shows the route that you took.
We’re comparing two phases here, the non-haze season (July to October 2020) and the haze season in January 2021.
How would you say the air quality is in Bangkok during the haze season?
I believe that the haze is contributed by agricultural fires in the north of Thailand.
Bangkok also has many construction sites that adds to the problem further. Another contributor is the heavy traffic in Bangkok, which has persisted for over a decade.
This is the recoded air pollution that you were exposed to in phase 2 during the haze season in January.
We have these two quite significant spikes on the left here.
Which we believe is the time that you were potentially moving outside in order to go to meetings or go home.
And you exposed to that outside hazy air during these times.
This area is interesting because as you mentioned, this is your sleeping time – when you’re at home and the backpack is in your home.
We can still see that you were exposed to moderate PM2.5 levels even at home.
This is quite common when we get city-wide pollution events such as haze, where the outdoor air pollution can have an effect on our indoor air quality.
Whether that’s coming in through leaving the windows or doors opened, or just natural coming and going as we enter and leave our homes.
Do you have any suggestions to reduce our exposure to pollution?
We recommend that to reduce pollution, the first of which is to use an air purifier if possible
In event of city-wide pollution, we recommend keeping windows closed and keeping the pathways between outdoor and indoor air as limited as possible.
That should help the indoor air quality.
Thank you so much Mr. Michael. This data reflects that our situation in Bangkok isn’t good enough.
I'll have no hesitation sharing this useful information with people in the society.
We really appreciate it at Dyson having participants getting involved with these projects
to help improve our understanding of air quality and personal exposure, and what we can do to reduce that exposure. Thank you very much.
Here are the results from the Dyson backpack project.
I think many people can view this from my perspective after watching this video, and that we should all be aware of this problem in our everyday lives.