The Fairbanks Winter Air Project (FairAir) shared results at the UAF Arctic Research Open House. Since this event was in May, it was well after the wintertime pollution season, and being before the wildfire season, air quality was quite good. For that reason, we need a source of particles and since our study also involves indoor air quality, we decided to make toast and have kids watch the air quality as the toast browned. Here, Meeta, a UAF Ph.D. candidate student, is standing by our display in the Mather Library.
The kids found that the air quality remained good before the bread started to brown, but when it browned, some pretty big spikes of pollution came off the toast. They then got to eat the toast with jam, which was a hit.
We had a great time talking with the community about results from the FairAir study. The sensors we used were made by the students at Tanana Middle School and worked great. We could show that the air purifier filter (bottom left of the photo) cleaned up the air nicely. We brought print versions of the articles that we had recently published in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner and are also highlighted on this site.
We are looking forward to more events like this and with lots of results coming out of the study now, we’ll have more to discuss with the community.