New Scientist reports:

Cellphones used by bicycle couriers are monitoring air pollution in Cambridge, UK, and beaming the data back to a research lab.

The technique is made possible by small wireless pollution sensors and custom software that allows the phones to report levels of air pollutants wherever they happen to be around town.

“Mobiles are everywhere, and now have a lot of computing power,” says Eiman Kanjo, the computer scientist at Cambridge University, UK, leading technical development of the project. “They can provide an alternative to expensive custom hardware and report from places that otherwise aren’t monitored.”

Kanjo and colleagues gave local cycle couriers air-pollution sensors and GPS units that connect to their cellphones via Bluetooth. Custom software lets the phone constantly report the current air quality and location to servers back in the lab.

“They cycle around the city as usual and we receive the data over the cellphone network,” says Kanjo. “We can find out what pollutants people are exposed to and where.”

The sensors are carried inside storage bins on the couriers’ bikes and record levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide. You can see the results of one trial run on an interactive map on this page.

It is worth remembering that when the Dept of the Environment began monitoring air pollution in London, it located the equipment in parks and gardens.

Link via Messenger of Doom. Image by Eiman Kanjo. Incidentally, we have an 8-freight (as in the picture but with no aluminium box), second hand, one careful lady driver, offered at £450.