New air quality monitoring contracts in Birmingham and Warsaw to address problem of air pollution

Birmingham and Warsaw are the latest in a growing list of cities taking decisive steps to address the problem of air pollution by monitoring their air quality with Airly, who will install their sensors across both cities. As a result, Warsaw now has the most air pollution monitors out of all of the cities in Europe. 

Birmingham and Warsaw join an ever-expanding list of cities which includes Hong Kong, Jakarta, Oslo and Granada who have partnered with Airly, and Airly Public in the case of Warsaw, to tackle the problem of air pollution. Airly provide a complete SaaS solution for air quality monitoring and control. The system operates precisely and reliably thanks to a proprietary, economic, distributed sensor network which provides hyper-local, real-time air quality data. They offer data on air quality that enables decision making to be based on current and accurate information. Airly enables operators to analyse trends and sources, implement targeted initiatives to fight urban air pollution, and monitor the resultant improvements. 

Wiktor WarchaÅ‚owski, CEO of Airly, stated, ‘We are delighted to serve the municipalities and their communities to help address the world’s biggest killer, air pollution, which is reducing life expectancy by 3 years around the world”. 

The European Economic Area's most recent estimates, indicate that in 2019, 307,000 people died prematurely caused by exposure to fine particulate matter in the European Union (EU). A minimum of  58%, or 178,000, of these fatalities could have been avoided if all of the EU Member States had reached the World Heath Organization's latest air quality guideline level of 5 µg / m3. The EU’s Zero Pollution Action Plan, part of their European Green Deal, has a target to reduce the number of these premature deaths by more than 55% by 2030, from the fatality levels of 2005.

Councillor Waseem Zaffar MBE, Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment at Birmingham City Council  said: “It is a promising next step for us today to be able to launch the Air Pollution Sensors project with Airly as this will help us create further awareness across our communities of how the air pollution situation is progressing. Now it is time for us all to think about changes we can make to create a difference, as individuals and as organisations.”

Warsaw is installing a large network of air quality sensors that will give it the greatest density of these sensors out of any of the European urban conglomerations. The Airly monitors deployed in the Polish capital and all neighbouring municipalities, under the terms of the contract agreed with Airly Public, will monitor air quality at 165 locations in real time around the clock. These instruments will monitor for harmful dust concentrations: PM1, PM2.5, PM10 as well as nitrogen dioxide and ozone.