You take my breath away

Think about some of the things we take for granted on a daily basis: clean water, electricity, and even the air we breathe. However, clean air is an absolute privilege - air pollution is a major health hazard in some of the world's largest cities like Beijing, Delhi, Mexico City.

Air pollution (measured by AQI) is coming in as the second leading cause of death only following high blood pressure and right above smoking. So if you’re loading up on sodium in your diet and ripping Juul pods, I’d be careful.

Is AQI the new smoking?

Diseases that result from poor air quality include stroke, bronchus and lung cancers, asthma and lower respiratory infections. As many as one in ten deaths can be attributed in part by Air Pollution.

Air pollution affects highly dense countries like China and India the most, with poorer countries taking the brunt of it. Even here in the US, we still see signs of harsh air quality including the frequent summer wildfires in California and the 2023 NYC week of dismal air quality due to the Canadian forest fires.

Its no surprise that “Air Purifier” is trending across Google as we continue to see challenges in managing air quality. Singapore was the country with the most searches, being one of the most densely populated cities in SE Asia. The US comes in at an honorable third place for search volume. Safe to say that people are catching onto the long term health defects in the air they breathe. Air purists might just outcompete veganism as the new health obsession.

Sniffing out early trends

The small but mighty sub of r/AirQuality is has only 7k subscribers now but is on an exponential growth curve. One of the most popular questions being, Definitive guide to buying an indoor Air Monitor?.

This opens up an interesting opportunity with this burgeoning trend for Ecommerce for AQI/CO2 monitors. A way to monitor AQI both indoors and outdoors could be more of a common practice as monitoring for pollutants become more entrenched into our daily habits.