About

Poor air quality in the form of particulate matter (PM2.5) is the number one health risk to humankind, with EPIC’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) showing that the burden of pollution on life expectancy outstrips that of malaria, HIV/AIDS and transportation injuries combined. While research shows that installing air quality monitors and sharing real-time data with the public in places with very little or no data leads to cleaner air, nearly 40 percent of countries—many of which satellite data shows are highly polluted—aren’t producing open air quality data for their citizens. That is largely because they are caught in a vicious cycle of inequality where most of the funding to combat pollution goes to some of the cleanest areas of the world.

The EPIC Air Quality Fund breaks this cycle by supporting local groups and organizations in installing monitors and providing open data to communities that could benefit the most. Providing this data allows citizens to understand the depth of the pollution problem where they live and call for change. The data also provides a necessary guidepost for setting air quality policies and  evaluating their progress.

“The EPIC Air Quality Fund supports local actors in countries with little or no air pollution data to generate information, share it with the public, and drive national-level impact. Our goal is to expand access to air quality data to 1 billion people by 2030. We believe achieving this goal will allow communities across the world to breathe cleaner air and live longer, healthier lives.” – Christa Hasenkopf, EPIC Clean Air Program Director

Air Pollution is the Leading Threat to Health

Particulate pollution remains the world’s greatest external risk to human health, with the impact on life expectancy comparable to that of smoking, more than 3 times that of alcohol use and unsafe water, and more than 5 times that of transport injuries like car crashes.

Data decreases pollution

When U.S. embassies in countries around the world started installing air pollution monitors and displaying the data publicly, a startling impact was observed: In non-OECD countries where PM2.5 monitors were deployed to locations where there were no or very little publicly PM2.5 data already available, annual PM2.5 levels in the cities with them were observed to decrease by more than 10 µg m-3 over six years.

Funding is unequal. Yet, the most polluted countries don't have access: Asia, Africa and Latin America make up 96 percent of life years lost due to pollution. Europe, the United States and Canada contribute just 4 percent, but they receive 60 percent of philanthropic funds to combat pollution. China and India receive a little over half of that and the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America receive just 4 percent of those resources. With little funding to install monitors, just 7, 4 and 19 percent of governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, respectively, provide their citizens with fully open air quality data.

The EPIC Air Quality Fund intends to provide support over multiple years because a long-term commitment to local actors is necessary to achieve change. It will require awardees to share the air quality data they produce in a fully open manner (compatible with a CC-BY-4.0 license, more guidance here) and on a freely accessible platform where the information will be findable alongside other global datasets. In this manner, the progress of the Fund’s supported efforts can be measured by anyone in the world, and the data produced can be ingested into a wide variety of international and national air quality efforts.