Testing Air Quality Using Low-Cost Sensors in Various Environments

As climate change intensifies in the next coming decades, there are many different components of our environment that need to be taken into consideration more closely. Considering how much time is spent indoors, this is especially imperative to test the indoor air quality in various locations. One such location consists of varying size university classrooms while another is a kitchen. In many classrooms, there is poor ventilation and limited air flow. This can have adverse effects on human health, and possibly impact the quality of the learning environment overall. In this study, we will be using three different air quality sensors: a dust track sensor, Levoit Core 400 S air purifier, and Quant-AQ’s sensor MODULAIR. These sensors will be collecting data at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign throughout this fall semester, as well as in cooking environments to see how the PM1, PM2.5, PM10, and CO2 levels change. This will help determine whether or not these environments have safe levels of particulate matter and CO2, while also identifying potential contributing factors to differing data. This study aims to bring more awareness and attention to air quality sensing, through the applications of low-cost sensors, in order to ensure safer environments in the future.