New monitors set to check air quality in Wrexham

New monitors are set to be installed in Wrexham to help check air quality in an “innovative and sustainable way”.

Wrexham Council has received a grant of £74,281 from the Welsh Government’s Local Air Quality Management Support Fund to undertake the project.

It comes as the local authority invests in a growing network of LoRaWAN gateways to establish low-power wide area networking coverage across the city and industrial estate.

LoRaWAN is an acronym for a method of transferring small amounts of data over radio waves from a network of remote sensors to a collection hub. It has the advantage of being low power, long range, high capacity (as in the number of sensors that a hub can received data from) and secure data transmission.

The project will see a network of 10 monitors set up to look at PM (Particulate Matter) Sulphur Dioxide and Nitrogen Dioxide alongside Environmental Noise.

It will look to work with the Smart Town scheme which will result in real time air quality data being available to the public who are them able to make informed decisions about active travel, travel routes, etc.

This data then be used to site future public health campaigns, education into curriculum topics and planners as a preventable approach to address future issues or further protect open green spaces.

According to Wrexham Council the new monitors are an improvement on existing devices, which are either too large in size or fail to provide enough detail and can only be used to evaluate trends on the levels of pollutants in urban environments.

Cllr Hugh Jones, Lead Member for Planning and Public Protection, said: “At the heart of many Welsh Government and Council policies is the health of people be it via a thriving economy allowing for a better quality of life or through an environment that promotes both physical and mental health and well being.

“It is hoped the provision of air quality data in real time on our website will allow the public to make an informed decision on their activities so they will act as both an educational tool and help us to make informed decisions on our activities.”

There is no mention on if the data gathered will be made public, or if so, how.