Air Pollution Monitoring 2.0!
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| 1700 to 1900, 10/10/25, Friday. Yuvraj, Yazhini and Abhinav |
In February this year, just a few days before the GATE exam, we were doing air pollution monitoring at different locations in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
More correctly, we were monitoring particulate matter concentrations using a small, low-cost sensor. I had made a blogpost about that too.
Given the geniuses we are, we called it "Pogai Monitoring". One ultra-genius, which I am guessing is Jayashree, even made a sticker out of me and Rindhiya doing PM monitoring in front of Noyyal Hostel during our time slot.
Last week here in IITB, we did the same thing but with more care and for way more time.
We had two high volume air samplers, one each for PM2.5 and PM10, with glass fibre filters, four MiniVol samplers with quartz and teflon filters, low-cost sensors for PM, CO, CO2, O3 and VOCs. Also an attachment to capture NO2 and SO2. Plus noise monitoring probes too.
We had two sets of all of these, one at the YP Gate and the other at the 6th floor of ESED Building.
We were monitoring for 24 hours continuously, with our team taking charge during 1700 to 1900 of 10/10/2025, Friday and 0300 to 0500 and 1100 to 1300 of 11/10/2025, Saturday; and the stationary and mobile sound monitoring after that.
Didn't analyse the data yet, so please enlighten yourself with snippets of our air pollution monitoring experience:
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| Jharilal struggling to stay awake at 0255 |
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| 0300 to 0500, 11/10/25, Saturday Yuvraj, Mahima and Yazhini Yuvraj was kinda annoyed about not getting a single non-shaky pic, mostly thanks to me. |
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| The sensors |
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| Me spying construction work through my binocs |
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| "Rupesh spying ....." |
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| When you want a mirror selfie but have dark circles more prominent than Saturn rings |
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| 1100 to 1300, 11/10/25 Yuvraj, Yazhini and Abhinav again |
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| 1730 to 1830, 11/10/25, Saturday Yuvraj and Yazhini monitoring noise near Central Library |
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| Comic by Chris on a photo clicked by me. |
During the 0700 to 0800 mobile sound monitoring, Yuvraj and I were so busy that we didn't click a single pic. But we spotted a white-breasted waterhen with her chicks near the library T-junction! Unfortunately no pics.
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| 0700 onwards, 12/10/25, Sunday Our valuable observations |
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| Yuvraj observed that all the dogs were sleeping facing the same direction. When he proceeded to click a picture (my idea), Dogesh lost it and decided to contribute a few decibels for our noise monitoring survey. This post was supposed to be up a week ago. But I guess the progressively tired-looking faces in the above photographs explain the delay. |
