CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
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Have folk see the new pollution tracker gadget now on pre order (for June next year)? I've got the app for forecasts but I suppose the advantage of a personal tracker is being able to pin down the bits of the commute to avoid if possible.
Still thinking through whether it's worth the money.
Would be nice if they could crowd-source data from all of these monitors and overlay it on a map.
I expect that this is where they are going with this. At the moment their forecasts on the app/web are limited to key cities and just an overall level at that (not down to within-city level).
Living within earshot of a sporadically busy road I am very tempted by this. I have often wondered what pollution monitors are available but never settled on one. The other's I have seen cost at least 50% more than this.
I guess they have kept the cost down by omitting items which would be more useful indoors (eg humidity and CO2 sensors).
I'm not very taken by the tin can design though. And is Vegan Leather just a euphemism for plastic?
My Plume Flow pollution gadget arrived and I was able to start using it this last Wednesday. It takes a week to properly calibrate (at least for NO2). It measures PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and VOCs.
Early days but it seems VOCs at a little high at home and at work. And as might be expected, Waverley Station isn't a place to hang around. My biggest problem is keeping the GPS tracker active: possibly the vbattery saver on my phone or sometimes the phone and device are too far apart to maintain the bluetooth connection. BTW is it a good idea to have bluetooth active on the phone in public places?
Will put up further obs when I have more experience
I've always been curious just how bad Duddingston Low Road is at rush hour. Have been tempted to buy something similar for ages, £129 a bit much for measuring the 2 or 3 roads I'm curious about.
>"is it a good idea to have bluetooth active on the phone in public places?"
I hope so, mine never gets turned off..
I'm still a little bemused by the VOCs measurements. After an update they went down a lot but have now drifted up to high levels. Real or calibration issue?
However this morning I found my power levels on the bike diminishing by the pedal stroke. I have just reviewed the Flow measurements and the PMs were very high. This also ties in with the Plume forecast for Edinburgh. This is of concern for anyone, but I also have asthma (late onset).
Yeah, the air today was definitely noticeably fouler than usual.
Roll on the City Transformation..
I should add that I came in through Dalkeith Country Park, along the River Esk, following NCN 1 and onto the Innocent. In principle, I was minimising my interactions with vehicles.
I think it was more an atmospheric thing rather than local vehicle pollution. That isn't to say that it didn't originate on road but more that it had spread to all areas. My eyes felt like they were full of grit at one point.
Bonfire night innit. Gunpowder treason and plot.
Could be acsimpson and ARobComp. The weather is not helping and it looks like there was a big spike in AQI at around 8pm last night.
It doesn't half have an effect though. I had to pop out for an eye test at lunch time and struggled on the walk back. My device is still recording very high AQIs.
It's a little taste of what life would be like if everyone installed a wood burning stove.
I certainly had a tingle in my throat at the end of the day yesterday after riding home, this is something I often find in london where it feels like I've been trying to inhale sandpaper after riding around to lots of things all day. Especially in summer.
I just feel very low powered.
St Johns Road (http://www.scottishairquality.scot/latest/site-info?site_id=ED1&view=graphing) and Queensferry Road (http://www.scottishairquality.scot/latest/site-info?site_id=ED9&view=graphing) are both showing pollution spikes at the moment although not unusually so.
Perhaps to calibrate, I need to stand next to one of these stations for a period! PMs and NO2 should be okay. Not sure about the VOCs. I don't seem to have CO or O3, unless it's included in the VOCs.
It's a little taste of what life would be like if everyone installed a wood burning stove.
I like my wood burner. I don't turn it on all that often, mind, and my log store is still pretty full.
Thinking in terms of controlled conditions, how different would the air quality be for wood being burned at the correct temperatures in an efficient stove, as against coal (or faux-coal briquettes) in the same stove?
Interesting that the three sensors reporting a '6' on the pollution scale are on the main roads to the south of Glasgow, Govanhill/Rutherglen/Cambuslangdirection. I thought the M8 would be worst.
I think the fairest comparison is with gas (or even electricity) is it not?
It's all a little bit of a balancing act and my understanding is probably simplified.
Burning wood generates a lot more PMs than clean electricity and gas but any CO2 released can be absorbed by a replacement tree. If you are in a rural area where PMs are not a big issue then burning wood can probably be considered better than burning gas (although potentially worse than truly green electricity)
Burning gas meanwhile produces fewer PMs (although IIRC still quite a high level of NOs) but any CO2 released has been locked up for millennia and so it is harder to undo the damage to the atmosphere. In urban area it is probably better (for us) than wood as it doesn't have the same detrimental effect on air quality.
Electricity meanwhile can be very clean by almost all measures depending on how it is generated. Unfortunately it currently costs about three times as much as gas and so using it to heat a typical UK house is expensive.
Of course I have ignored the cost of production for the generation equipment required for green energy. It may still be very low over the lifetime but is not pollution free.
I don't follow how CO2 from burning wood is different from CO2 from burning gas.
@amir, you have my sympathies.
My asthma kicked back in again last month as the temperatures dropped a bit. The warm summer meant I was barely troubled by it for around four months. I'm also affected by higher pollution levels on the street, and by things like perfume. I remember when I used to do a fair bit of addax riding that my asthma would affect my riding ability. Not one every ride, but if I'd had an episode even a day or two before a ride I definitely felt it, especially on climbs. Makes sense really: your body is not getting as much oxygen as it needs for the muscles to propel you that distance.
Have to say though that addax did help my asthma, in fact any longish ride out in the fresh countryside air helped.
Yeah - wood burning stoves in rural areas can often be a pretty cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of heating your home. I don't think they are very sensible in your average tenement though.
@Frenchy, As I understand it the CO2 in fossil fuel has been out of the atmosphere for millennia and once released cannot easily be taken back out of circulation. While the CO2 from wood has recently been in the atmosphere and so a new tree could be considered to be capturing this CO2.
However I realise that the CO2 in the atmosphere is a large put and things going in and out are all comparable. There are also other greenhouse gases released in larger quantities by wood.
It's a little like government finances. When they say they will spend the money from heating bills VAT on a certain item. The money is all mixed together so it can't be the same money.
The best option is to burn as little of any fuel as possible and try to use green energy sources.
Damn the autocorrect for turning audax into addax! (At least it wasn't oddax).
The issue with wood burning stoves in urban areas is the particulates, or in old fashioned layman's language, soot. That's the problem with coal, too.
The common local vs global pollution confusion
I suppose there's a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning at local level too if the wood burners are not burning efficiently, though that applies to gas boilers as well.
The best option is to burn as little of any fuel as possible and try to use green energy sources.
But before that to make sure you've insulated everything to the max.
"But before that to make sure you've insulated everything to the max."
Absolutely!
"But before that to make sure you've insulated everything to the max."
That is definitely high on my list of ways to avoid burning more fuel than necessary.
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