While cigarette smoking has decreased significantly in the last decade, we now have a new threat to our lungs and it is affecting everyone. According to Darren Baxter, expert and researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research, air pollution is the “tobacco of the 21st century,” and he explains that residents of North England, and I assume all over the world, are unaware of the enormity of this threat.
Fortunately, Upsens, an Italian company driven by female entrepreneur Ketty Paller, has been working to raise awareness about the many pollutants in our indoor and outdoor environments. This week, Upsens has launched an Indiegogo Campaign for an innovative device that allows our worldwide community to take the next step in environmental monitoring and the sharing economy.
The Upsens device is a stand-alone modular base that measures the conditions of the environment around you with its interchangeable sensors, AIR and WAVE. AIR monitors indoor air quality and tracks the presence of chemicals such as VOCs, while WAVE detects and measures electromagnetic pollution sources in a wide range of frequencies (80MHz – 5.8GHz) so you can limit your exposure to harmful electrosmog discharged by electronic devices. These are only two in a series of eight sensors that will be released later down the line.
In addition to the device, Upsens’ dedicated app, which brings the community of our planet together, is what will truly make change. By giving users across the world the ability to share their measurements and environmental history onto the “worldwide map,” they can contribute to the well-being of their community, develop a bonded sense of responsibility to each other, and take action. Eventually, Upsens hopes to have a geo-referential database of global life quality for their users, and with this data, we can understand where our environments are the worst and work to fix the problem.
