Yesterday a very kind man by the name of Jon Fox came over to my financial systems office from his air quality monitoring office several miles away, to bring me a freshly calibrated, newly battery-replaced, bright yellow and impressively configured device by the name of “DustMate environmental dust detector”:
I particularly love the way he set it up to say ‘4TH PLINTH’ when it’s starting up!
This lovely bit of kit measures the mass of PM10s (particulate matter – or, basically, dust!) per cubic metre of air. In any 24-hour period, EU legislation requires there to be an average of no more than 50µg/m³ in the air, otherwise the level is too high. I’m also informed that 40µg/m³ is a pretty good rule of thumb for a comfortable level, as opposed to being ‘just within the rules’.
I’ve already had a bit of fun experimenting with it. The air in my office was a nice and low 11µg/m³ – until I held the DustMate above a colleague’s several-year-old chair and gave the seat a good slap, whereupon the reading leapt to around 6,500µg/m³! The air in my bus home this evening varied between 16 and 33µg/m³ – must take it out in my car at some point to see which is the healthier way to travel! Finally I wandered around my living room, which for the most part was healthy but in some of the more computery (dust-magnet!) parts of the air it got well into three figures, especially under my desk where two computers were puffing out their hot air. Note to self: remember not to lie under the desk breathing in deeply for hours at a time.
Anyway, as you may have realised, all this is in preparation for me doing the ‘Air quality’ experiment suggested by ebase. It currently has a respectable five votes but I hope people continue to click ‘Like’ on it so I can actually justify doing it on its votes 
Don’t forget though, it’s still not too late to submit or vote for experiments you want to see me do up there. Who knows what other specialist equipment I might then need to borrow by the weekend?!
