Aclima Study of Google Offices Offers Global Air Analysis

Internet search engine tycoons Google has long been renowned for offering its employees a wide range of perks, including free food, gym access, fitness classes, extended sabbaticals and many more. They’re also thought to be amongst the most forward-thinking companies when it comes to healthy living and life prolongation… but do their staff breathe cleaner air?

That’s what California-based environmental health start-up Aclima wants to know – and they’ve been busy finding out over the last few years. The project had maintained secrecy over his work until earlier this summer, when they announced that they had placed a network of 500 sensors in Google offices in 21 different countries around the world several years ago.

The Importance of Clean Air

As concerns about the havoc that we are wreaking on the planet with our industrial practices and daily habits reach fever pitch, people all over the world are becoming more aware of the importance of the air they breathe.

In terms of big business, many fabrication factories and power plants are employing advanced gas sensor technology to control emissions, monitoring for such chemicals and gases as hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, oxygen and total hydrocarbons, among others. Having a handle on how many pollutants are being emitted by plants allows the chemical industry to take the appropriate steps to control them.

Meanwhile, in a more individual setting, home air quality monitors are becoming increasingly popular in households are the USA and Europe. These ingenuous little gadgets can monitor air quality, as well as other important information such as temperature and humidity, then make suggestions based upon the findings.

Aclima Aims to Improve Environment as Well as Google Offices

Aclima announced its partnership with Google and with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Library back in June, shedding light on its mysterious work up until that point. The sensors, created to gather information from all over the world about carbon dioxide emissions and particulate matter (PM2.5), are intended to be used to build up a better idea of how the air we breathe affects our health – both short term and long term.

Aclima also hoped to establish more solid connections between the location of buildings, building management protocol and the health of the employees. “There is absolutely an influence. Buildings are not just these static containers. They live in systems, and these systems are our cities,” explained Aclima co-founder Davida Herzl. “Aclima is working to make this invisible connection visible, on a grand scale and across industries.

Though environmental sensors have stayed largely within academia and within the industry, they are becoming more prevalent among society as a whole. For example, SENSOR+ TEST 2015 (a trade fair for sensor developers, engineers and users) took environmental monitoring as its focus for this year.

Meanwhile, open-sourced technology such as that pioneered by Smart Citizen uses environmental sensors combined with Smartphone apps to give the common people information about the air they breathe. Clearly, our air is a work in progress – but one we’re intent on perfecting.