Done. Marion grau clenches her hand into a fist. she has assembled a fine dust measuring device from nine different components. "In my practice, we have an alarmingly large number of children with bronchitis and upper respiratory tract diseases", says the pediatrician from nuremberg. "Air pollution" certainly plays a role in this, says gray. That’s why she decided to take part in the workshop on "building your own fine dust measuring devices" at the nuremberg art and culture quarter.
"That’s real citizen participation, finds thomas ostrowski of the nuremberg club bluepingu. Ostrowski leads the workshop. He is fascinated by the idea that many people measure the individual fine dust pollution at home with self-made devices and thus draw a picture of the air quality of their city or community. This would create detailed scientific data to demand improvements from the respective city administration.
Nurembergers build their own measuring instruments
there are now 800 private measuring stations nationwide, says ostrowski, who initiated the frankenstaub project of the bluepingu association. "The workshop should now only be a prelude", says the computer scientist, who is responsible for sustainable mobility at the association.
"Not much is known about fine dust, except that it penetrates deeper into the body than coarser dust and damages the lungs and cardiovascular system, says pediatrician gray. your finished measuring device is in a gray tube to protect it from the elements. The doctor wants to install it in front of a window of her practice near a busy street in the north of nuremberg. grau also wants to display the measurement results in the waiting room. Finally, many parents who repeatedly come to her with their coughing child asked what they could do for the health of their offspring.
air pollution in bavaria: nuremberg and wurzburg fight fine particulates
The fine dust measuring devices were designed by the OK lab in stuttgart, a group of internet experts working for transparency and open data on the internet. With his project frankenstaub, ostrowski wants to build on their experiences.
In nuremberg, in addition to the private measuring stations, there are currently three official measuring stations – one operated by the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (lfu) and two by the city of. Bamberg has one official fine dust measuring station, munich five and erlangen none at all. While the official testing devices also recorded the type of fine dust, the homemade ones could only measure the amount and size of the fine dust, says ostrowski.
According to the lfu, Bavaria’s top locations for particulate matter exceedances are munich (stachus) and wurzburg (stadtring-sud), where between 1. January and the 16. December 23 days each were found to be too high. This is followed by the measuring station in nuremberg (von-der-tann-strabe) with 22 days. 35 transgressions are allowed per year.