Poor air quality is shortening our lives — asking for open data can change that

Imagine taking a photo with your phone, only to find out that you didn’t own the image — the company that sold you the phone did instead. You don’t get to decide where and how to share that photo. Instead, the company that sold you that phone could post the image wherever they wanted without your permission and even sell it.

That’s how some air quality sensor companies are treating data their customers generate. These sorts of data policies are not good for individual consumers, and in the case of air quality, it’s bad for the global community’s progress toward cleaner air. Luckily, we can do something about it.

Air pollution is the number one health risk to humankind, taking on average 1.9 years from our lives globally. We know from countries’ experiences in battling air pollution around the world that when air quality data is available to communities, the issue gains momentum, the public and governments are spurred to take action and the air ultimately gets cleaner. In a study where air quality data was publicly shared over multiple years in cities where there was little existing prior data, air quality was shown to improve because of a constant drumbeat of air quality data to the public. Using The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC)’s Air Quality Life Index methodology, we estimate that populations in these cities could live a year longer due to these air quality improvements if they are sustained.

The profound effect of sharing air quality data where it doesn’t otherwise exist makes sense. Air quality data is cited by decision-makers as a key component for shaping country-wide policy for tackling the issue. In truth, any action to reduce air pollution will require data to understand if it was effective and to monitor progress.

The good news is that there has never been more air quality data in more places being generated across the planet, given the proliferation of lower cost air quality sensors available in the market over the past decade.

The bad news is that much of the data being generated can’t be legally shared in a fully open way even if the people and organizations generating that data want it to be.

That’s because some air quality sensor companies don’t allow their customers to own the data they generate, nor share it to the public platforms of their choice. This means scientists, community leaders and air quality advocates are unable to get the maximum impact with the data compared to if they owned the data and had the freedom to share it in a fully open, public way.

But these policies are not immovable, and simple requests from the community can shift this dynamic. We know because we accidentally did.

This past July, we at EPIC launched the EPIC Air Quality Fund. The purpose of the fund is to support local actors in standing up air quality monitoring in countries where there has historically been very little — or even no — government generated air quality data shared with the public. The fund prioritizes 75 countries where we estimate there is an especially great opportunity for a small, strategic project to generate and share air quality data to have a national impact.

In designing this fund, we have made specific requirements around data-sharing for the awards. All data must be made available in a fully open format. To meet those conditions, awardees will need to legally own the data they generate. We believe these requirements will allow the maximum impact of the data both in a particular country and in the larger international community. The data requirements also act as a transparent, public way for us to gauge — and be gauged — on the progress of the fund.

To avoid applicants having to sift through legalese of terms and conditions of many different air quality companies to compare them with our award requirements, EPIC reached out to companies to better understand their data policies.

In our communications with companies, we did not advocate for open data nor data ownership for consumers. We stated that we were inquiring about the status of their policies in order to understand whether or not they were compatible with the terms of our awards. To our surprise, about 30% of companies modified their policies to better empower their customers to use the data they collect to share as they see fit — simply because we inquired what these policies were. In fact, only a minority of the companies we reached out to did not give full data ownership to their customers.

Because of these changes spurred by simple questions from a small funder, far more scientists, community leaders and air quality advocates will be able to share their data more freely than the ten or so awardees we will support through our fund in this upcoming cycle. This new norm will be something other newcomers to the air quality sensing market will notice, too.

The unintended, outsized impact of asking companies a few data policy questions has an important lesson for the air quality community: we each play a more vital role than we may realize in shaping the data policies that in turn shape progress on our collective work.

Air quality is one of the largest public health problems of our time. To make an impact in this area, we need to own the data we generate. We need to be able to share it how we see fit. And we need to use equipment from companies that let us do both of those things.