Class Year

2026

Document Type

Article

Date of Creation

Spring 2026

Department 1

Public Policy

Abstract

PurpleAir monitors may serve a vital role in marginalized or under-monitored communities nationwide. These low-cost monitors—roughly $300—give communities the ability to monitor their air quality at local geographies in ways that are infeasible for expensive, regulatory-grade air monitors. They also have the potential to aid community advocacy efforts around environmental and transportation policy by giving community members literal ownership over the monitoring, including precise locations, and philosophical ownership over the advocacy efforts. To determine the potential democratization of air quality data by PurpleAir monitors in socially disadvantaged communities, we analyze the sociodemographic characteristics of neighborhoods with PurpleAir monitors. We find PurpleAir monitors more likely to be in lower-income and less-White neighborhoods. We conduct a policy thought experiment and estimate the that—depending on the particular race/ethnicity or poverty comparison—there would need to be between 165 and 2,799 additional monitors placed in neighborhoods with high concentrations of Black or Hispanic residents, or people experiencing poverty, to eliminate the disparity in access to PurpleAir monitoring. Without expanded grant or government funding and programming, it seems unlikely PurpleAir devices, on their own, will truly democratize data for the environment.

Comments

Produced as part of the 2024 Kolbe Fellowship.

This pre-print version of this article has not yet been peer reviewed.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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