AQ monitoring
Considering the political war against science and the cuts and imminent discontinuation of air quality monitoring, I can't think of a better way that I can personally fight back than to build my own air quality monitoring equipment and make information available from my location. I live in a city that has some of the worst air quality in North America and sometimes rivals the worst on the planet. I'm in Salt Lake City, UT. We have worse CO quality on average than Los Angeles. I can't see that losing AQ information here due to the policies of anti-fact propagandists can be anything but detrimental to the cause of ecology and health. I have access to the perfect conditions and staging area. It's time to take the bull by the horns and do what I can in my little corner of the earth.
Equipment that I can see online range from $100 to $6,000. Most all gather the usual data e.g. particulate matter, CO2, NO2, SO2, O3, plus the usual weather data, but one of the most important sensors seems difficult to find, one for carbon monoxide. CO is a real problem here. There are really cheep sensors for indoors and there are CO sensor modules I can buy to build it myself. I have ample electronics experience and I'd be fine with designing my own but I'm not sure whether those modules detect CO at the levels one would be interested in for data collection outdoors rather than simply tripping a switch when indoor levels reach a critical state. That's something I'll have to dig for.
I'd really like to hear some input on this. If you have ideas, experience or have done such a thing yourself, please share anything you want to offer. Have you heard of good, better, best equipment, bad equipment or CO monitoring? Anything that comes to mind would be highly appreciated.