New York City using high-tech cars to monitor air quality in certain communities
NEW YORK -- New technology has been deployed on the streets of the Big Apple to better monitor the air quality.
CBS2's Leah Mishkin has more on how data will be collected block by block.
It may look like your average car, but the Aclima vehicle is designed to measure air quality as it drives.
How does it work? The air enters through an opening near the side door and makes it way to the trunk, where the technology is located.
"Typically, these kinds of sensors are the size of trailers, very expensive, very large, very difficult to deploy. So what we've done is miniaturized that technology," Aclima CEO and co-founder Davida Herzl said.
That allows data to be collected block by block.
"A child coming out of a school playground. A housing complex that might be situated next to a highway, like the major Deegan," said Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
That type of micro information is what the DEC commissioner says the agency hadn't been able to collect, until now through this partnership.
The data has come from stationary air-monitoring sources.
"We'll be able to put those dollars toward mass transit improvements, street grade improvements, improving street tree cover," Seggos said.
Seggos said the California-based company's cars are already out in the Bronx, northern Manhattan, Albany, and Buffalo.
The state is targeting disadvantaged areas that are known to have bad air quality, something one South Bronx resident said she has seen firsthand in her neighborhood.
"My cousins have some of the most chronic asthma, that they had to be heavily medicated, constantly on ibuterol, trips to the emergency room, emergency room, to the point where they actually left New York City," a woman named Melissa said. "This data is just going to really drive that point home and hold everyone accountable."
The cars will measure air quality in a total of 10 communities across the state.