Working in conjunction to measure air pollution changes occurring from street to street in the same city, the Environmental Defense Fund, Google Earth Outreach and researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have equipped a Google Street View car with environmental monitoring tools from Aclima.

"We were really surprised by seeing just how variable air pollution is within our cities," said Joshua Apte, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the study's coauthor.

Collecting data every 100 feet using mobile sensors, researchers found that pollution levels were different block to block, with streets located closer to places like restaurants, autobody shops and cement plants returning higher levels of pollution.

With an emphasis on measuring levels of black carbon, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide (chemicals associated with health problems), Google cars measured the air quality of three different neighborhoods in Oakland, CA, for roughly 150 days in one year.

Typically, pollution is measured by pulling air quality data from stationary sensors located in different parts of a city. However, according to researchers, more can be determined about pollution levels based on the data pulled from the mobile sensors.

Researchers believe that this data will be valuable for a number of uses—from informing those suffering from asthma and other respiratory issues to scientists and other agencies wanting to improve air quality.

"One of the things the [scientific] community wants to know is 'What do people breathe?'," Apte said. "You can learn more about those relationships and discover how pollutants that we don't understand that well have important health impacts."

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