Air quality data on Whitefield residents’ fingertips

When residents of Whitefield felt the government had not done enough to record pollution in the area and formulate remedial plans accordingly, they took matters into their own hand Now 13 low-cost monitors have been set up in various locations, and the air quality is measured every five minutes. 

Since monitors available in the market were expensive, costing more than Rs 15,000 even, Shankar, along with Varun Ramakrishnan, a Class 12 student, developed a low-cost system using monitors that cost Rs 6,000-7,500 Resident welfare associations of different housing societies bought monitors for themselves, as did a few individuals. All the data recorded is uploaded to the cloud, allowing us study the data, and see which areas record the worst air quality and during which time of the year,” Shankar said.