A new study from NIWA has mapped outdoor air quality for Invercargill and Alexandra in more detail than ever before.
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They found that outdoor air in the most polluted locations contained three times as much particulate matter – from smoke and other pollutants – as the air in the least polluted areas. Working alongside local community organisation South Alive, NIWA installed air quality monitors in the homes of six volunteers to collect data every few minutes on levels of particulate matter. This enabled the scientists to work out whether indoor air was being contaminated from inside or from outside the home, or both.
NIWA hopes their study will help councils better understand how air quality varies in towns and cities, which in turn will help set regulation and design solutions for good indoor air quality in the future.
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