AQEarth Fort Collins: Elevating Community Air Quality Needs

The AQSync air monitoring instruments at Fort Collins High School

After a year of air monitoring in Fort Collins, Colorado, the year-long AQEarth project is wrapping up, shifting course, and working on new things!

AQEarth is a project that aims to work collaboratively with communities to help meet their air monitoring needs, developing and implementing air monitoring systems at five different partner sites across North America, starting in Fort Collins. It’s funded through a small business innovation research grant from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and is a collaboration between 2B Technologies, TD Enviro, and Montrose Environmental.

A PAM on a PSD school bus

In Fort Collins, the AQEarth team has been partnering with the City of Fort Collins’ air quality team, who were excited to use the project as a platform to expand their work with Poudre School District (PSD), involving the school’s facilities and education teams early on in the project development. A year of monitoring in the city kicked off in June of 2022, with stationary outdoor AQSync air monitoring instruments installed at Fort Collins High School, Centennial High School, and Dunn Elementary, continuously measuring CO, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, O₃, NO, NO₂, CO₂ and tVOCs.

A second part of the project included the placement of mobile air sensors (2B Tech’s PAMs) on PSD maintenance vehicles and school buses to measure the spatial extent of pollution around the district and identify potential hotspots. These sensors measured sensor-grade CO, PM _2.5 , and CO ₂ over the year.

PSD Teachers learning about air quality and how to use the air sensors.

And the project continues! The next major component involves more classroom learning: teachers in PSD will have access to 10 handheld sensors measuring PM_2.5, CO, and CO₂ and an associated air quality curriculum (TD Enviro’s AirActions) for use with students and in labs in the coming school years. These sensors are great educational tools and get students to take their own outdoor air measurements to investigate and analyze what’s around them.

The Fort Collins High School AQSync will stay up and running with assistance from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. Data from the instruments will continue to be available to the City and PSD teachers, students, and staff. PSD has been making many moves in the air quality realm, with more air monitors and portable air purifiers being placed at schools around the district. The AQEarth team is excited to continue working with the City of Fort Collins and PSD. Their willingness to be our first AQEarth community is appreciated!

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Research reported on the AQEarth project is supported by the National Institute Of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44ES024031. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.