What is Community Air Quality Monitoring?

East End Quality of Life Initiative works with the Environmental Strategy Service of Sheffield City Council – who are responsible for measuring air pollution across the city – and with Sheffield Primary Care Trust to maintain the current programme of pollution measurement in partnership with local communities. 

Brinsworth Comprehensive, one of East End Quality of Life Initiative's community air quality monitoring partners, have been monitoring diffusion tubes and analysing air quality data at their school site in Rotherham. Brinsworth Comprehensive recently hosted a Carbon Challenge Roadshow where students audited the school's energy usage and developed ideas on how to cut emissions.

Community Action on Clean Air

Neil Parry watches Audrey Harris of Park Community Action changing a diffusion tube - just one of the many community groups across Sheffield taking action on clean air. Read the article from Your Sheffield, June 2009.

History of Community Air Quality Monitoring in Sheffield

Community Air Quality Monitoring of nitrogen dioxide in Sheffield started in 1998 in people’s backyards in Tinsley using diffusion tubes which are changed every month.  It began because local people were concerned about the effects of air pollution on their health and quality of life.  The community air quality monitoring network has been extended to cover other communities in the city, involving Community Partners such as local forums, environmental groups, neighbourhood watch groups, and secondary schools.

East End Quality of Life Initiative welcomes enquiries from community groups who would like to monitor their local air quality.  Contact Neil Parry on 0114 2859911. Download the flyer for more information.

Why do local communities participate ?

· Community organisations are well placed to know the locations in their neighbourhoods where residents are concerned about air pollution.

· This brings the issue of  air pollution down to the local level.

· It empowers local communities to better articulate their concerns about poor air quality, traffic and its effects on the community’s health and quality of life.

What do community organisations do each month?

East End Quality of Life Initiative supports groups to get the local pollution monitoring set up.  Every month on a set day decided by the community volunteers, they change the diffusion tubes.  The tube details (batch number, tube number, site, date and time of change over) are written on a log sheet and sent with the exposed tubes to the laboratory for analysis.  Before the set date in the next month unexposed tubes are sent to each group.  This process takes no more than one hour per month.  The results are sent to groups every month, usually in the form of a chart, or the full dataset if required. 

What does it cost?

Sheffield’s Environmental Strategy Service has obtained funding from DEFRA to pay for the diffusion tubes analysis since 2003, and some of Sheffield City Council’s Area Panels have contributed to help  community organisations with the monitoring.

Air quality throughout Sheffield can be viewed on Sheffield City Council's Air Map, which brings together data from all the various monitoring sites in the city.

Current and historical air quality data recorded by Sheffield City Council and Defra can be viewed for Firshill, Orphanage Road (groundhog1), Tinsley Infants School (groundhog2), Lowfield Junior and Infant School (groundhog3), Wicker (groundhog4), Sheaf Square, opposite railway station (groundhog5), City Centre - Charter Square, and Tinsley - Ingfield Avenue.

Download Andy Elleker's Annual Report and the draft copy of his report to Defra, A Further Assessment of Nitrogen Dioxide (please note, this is a draft awaiting comment from Defra). You can also download the presentations (in pdf format):

• Andy Elleker's Results of the Diffusion Tube Project
• Neil Parry's Air Quality and the Law: a community perspective
• Ogo Ossamor's Trees and Air Quality in Cities
• Luke Williamson's Local Climate Impacts Profile for Sheffield
• Steve Simmons Reducing Emissions through Biomethane Use (view the video separately)

Updated community air quality and health trends with a summary of the health effects of air pollution are available on our reports page.