[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":357},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-posts":3},[4],{"_path":5,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":9,"description":10,"date":11,"author":12,"slug":13,"heroImage":14,"heroAlt":15,"heroYOffset":16,"categories":17,"body":19,"_type":351,"_id":352,"_source":353,"_file":354,"_stem":355,"_extension":356},"/blog/openair-foundation-blog","blog",false,"","Air Quality Deserves Practical Public Infrastructure","To our community, our partners, and everyone who has ever stepped outside and wondered what they were breathing. Introducing the Open Air Foundation.","2026-07-27","OpenAir Foundation","openair-foundation-blog","/images/blog/openair-foundation/IMG_6678.webp","An AirGradient air quality monitor installed outdoors.","30%",[18],"Foundation Updates",{"type":20,"children":21,"toc":338},"root",[22,30,35,46,51,59,68,73,78,83,89,94,99,104,109,115,120,125,131,136,142,147,153,158,164,169,181,205,215,230,240,261,271,286,295,300,305,314,319,324],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":25,"children":26},"element","p",{},[27],{"type":28,"value":29},"text","This week, at the Africa Clean Air Forum in Pretoria, we were proud to officially announce the beginning of the Open Air Foundation: a new non-profit foundation, legally established in Switzerland in April 2026, dedicated to building practical, public infrastructure for airborne environmental health.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":31,"children":32},{},[33],{"type":28,"value":34},"It has been a week of stimulating conversation about air quality across the African continent. On Wednesday, we shared a stage with three major players in the air quality funding space, the EPIC Air Quality Fund, Coefficient Giving, and the Clean Air Fund, to announce that the Open Air Foundation will join them as, we hope, a new global funder in this field.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":37,"children":39},"h3",{"id":38},"how-we-got-here",[40],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":42,"children":43},"strong",{},[44],{"type":28,"value":45},"How We Got Here",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":47,"children":48},{},[49],{"type":28,"value":50},"This moment is the result of six years of working with my co-founder and I in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Between the two of us, we raised four children there, and like so many families, we watched them come home coughing during the annual burning season. We decided to build a handful of low-cost air quality monitors for their schools, tested out positive pressure system solutions, and led workshops educating children about air pollution. What started as a small project grew into AirGradient, a successful open-source air quality monitor manufacturer.",{"type":23,"tag":52,"props":53,"children":58},"blog-image-row",{"left-alt":54,"left-src":55,"right-alt":56,"right-src":57},"AirGradient team building a positive-pressure system","/images/blog/openair-foundation/building-pps.webp","Positive-pressure system drawing","/images/blog/openair-foundation/pps-drawing-1.webp",[],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":60,"children":61},{},[62],{"type":23,"tag":63,"props":64,"children":65},"em",{},[66],{"type":28,"value":67},"The very start of our journey as AirGradient in Thai schools, experimenting with monitors, building filters and testing positive pressure systems.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":69,"children":70},{},[71],{"type":28,"value":72},"Throughout our company’s growth, we kept our non-profit values close to our hearts, donating monitors to communities in need. Over time, this work grew into something that no longer fit comfortably inside a company. Even with the best intentions, our commercial structure created perceived conflicts of interest when we tried to lead non-profit work. Additionally, some philanthropic organizations and public-interest partners needed a neutral, independent counterpart to collaborate with.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":74,"children":75},{},[76],{"type":28,"value":77},"Alongside this first limitation, we also wanted to go one step further in our dedication to the open-source mindset. The hard work that AirGradient employees have put in for over 6 years has culminated into fully open hardware, firmware and tools. These deserve to be protected independently from a company’s success, so that their future use may be indefinite.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":79,"children":80},{},[81],{"type":28,"value":82},"Our solution was to establish a foundation. The Open Air Foundation is how we want our work to outlast and outgrow AirGradient, carrying forward everything we have learned about establishing monitoring networks, training communities to sustain them, and stewarding open-source hardware and firmware as a public good.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":84,"children":86},{"id":85},"our-focus",[87],{"type":28,"value":88},"Our Focus",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":90,"children":91},{},[92],{"type":28,"value":93},"The scope of the Open Air Foundation extends beyond simply monitoring air pollution, with the greater goal of contributing to practical public infrastructure for airborne environmental health.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":95,"children":96},{},[97],{"type":28,"value":98},"After nearly seven years in this field, we have come to see the air quality space as deeply fragmented. Outdoor and indoor air quality are often treated as separate issues, each with its own conferences, policies, research communities, and educational resources. Furthermore, the overlap between traditional air pollution work and the fields of airborne biosafety and pandemic preparedness is almost none.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":100,"children":101},{},[102],{"type":28,"value":103},"Protecting air quality deserves an integrated infrastructure. Indoor air quality monitors measuring particulate matter can also help infer the likelihood of airborne pathogens. The same protective solutions used against wildfire smoke can serve communities during a pandemic. As climate change accelerates, it becomes more important to treat indoor and outdoor air pollution, as well as airborne pathogens, as parts of the same lived reality.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":105,"children":106},{},[107],{"type":28,"value":108},"The Open Air Foundation exists to connect these gaps: linking scientific expertise, hardware manufacturing, and years of community-level monitor deployment into a single, shared system. Our goal is replicable infrastructure and a place for sharing knowledge, so that what works in one community can be adopted by another without duplicating the underlying investment.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":110,"children":112},{"id":111},"our-work",[113],{"type":28,"value":114},"Our Work",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":116,"children":117},{},[118],{"type":28,"value":119},"We organize this work around a simple theory: detect, understand, protect. Communities first need low-cost, open tools to make invisible risks visible. That data needs to become trusted local evidence, so we invest in capacity building that helps local teams communicate what the numbers mean. And measurement is only the beginning; the goal is protection. Cleaner indoor air, filtration, ventilation improvements, and response plans that can be deployed quickly when pollution events or disease outbreaks occur.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":121,"children":122},{},[123],{"type":28,"value":124},"To make this journey possible, our activities span three fields: becoming a space for open source and open data stewardship, developing low-cost technology for protective pandemic preparedness, and supporting communities measuring air pollution with air quality monitor donations.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":126,"children":128},{"id":127},"a-home-for-open-source-stewardship",[129],{"type":28,"value":130},"A Home for Open Source Stewardship",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":132,"children":133},{},[134],{"type":28,"value":135},"At the heart of this foundation is a simple conviction: knowledge that is shared openly outlasts any single company. AirGradient will be transferring its open hardware designs, open firmware and code, educational resources, and toolkits developed with UNDP and UNICEF to the Open Air Foundation. By giving these open-source tools a dedicated, independent, non-profit home, we want the Open Air Foundation to become a place where knowledge is built upon further. Ultimately, we want to create public infrastructure that goes beyond our tools that exist today.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":137,"children":139},{"id":138},"low-cost-protective-solutions-for-biohazards",[140],{"type":28,"value":141},"Low-Cost Protective Solutions for Biohazards",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":143,"children":144},{},[145],{"type":28,"value":146},"In addition to our open-source stewardship, the Open Air Foundation will utilize its scientific expertise to develop and field-test improvised building protections against outdoor aerosols to advance scientific research on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. In this new venture, which has been awarded as a two million USD grant, we hope to further bridge the more traditional air quality monitoring space with the field of airborne biohazards to create a holistic approach towards addressing clean and safe air.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":148,"children":150},{"id":149},"airgradients-in-kind-contribution-and-local-capacity-building",[151],{"type":28,"value":152},"AirGradient’s In-Kind Contribution and Local Capacity Building",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":154,"children":155},{},[156],{"type":28,"value":157},"Lastly, the Open Air Foundation will build on AirGradient’s six years of expanding air quality monitoring access to communities around the world. AirGradient’s donation of 5,000 air quality monitors to the Open Air Foundation will be deployed over the next five years, along with an initial USD 100,000 contribution. It is not enough to only deploy monitors in regions that suffer from air pollution and are not yet monitoring their air pollution; the communication of this data to the population is just as important to influence individual behaviour change, such as wearing masks and not burning, as well as citizen action and policy as a whole. When people understand the implications of air pollution, coupled with the evidence gathered by monitors, real change can happen from a local to even regional and national level. To deploy these monitors, we are also seeking external funding. Instead of funding being allocated to monitor procurement, this approach allows external funding to go toward installation, capacity building, and educational activities.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":159,"children":161},{"id":160},"our-four-pilot-projects",[162],{"type":28,"value":163},"Our Four Pilot Projects",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":165,"children":166},{},[167],{"type":28,"value":168},"Infrastructure means nothing without people putting it to work. Alongside our launch, we're proud to announce our first four pilot projects that have received air quality monitor donations:",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":170,"children":171},{},[172],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":173,"children":174},{},[175],{"type":23,"tag":176,"props":177,"children":180},"img",{"alt":178,"src":179},"…","/images/blog/openair-foundation/IMG_6664.webp",[],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":182,"children":183},{},[184,196,198,203],{"type":23,"tag":185,"props":186,"children":190},"a",{"href":187,"rel":188},"https://cleanairafrica.org/",[189],"nofollow",[191],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":192,"children":193},{},[194],{"type":28,"value":195},"The African Clean Air Network",{"type":28,"value":197}," ",{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":199,"children":200},{},[201],{"type":28,"value":202},"(ACAN)",{"type":28,"value":204}," is receiving 50 AirGradient monitors for its Sensor Bank Scheme, which places calibrated monitors directly into the hands of researchers, institutions, and community groups across Africa.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":206,"children":207},{},[208],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":209,"children":210},{},[211],{"type":23,"tag":176,"props":212,"children":214},{"alt":178,"src":213},"/images/blog/openair-foundation/GDA_2026_Kaito_School_Richard_Muraya_3.webp",[],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":216,"children":217},{},[218,228],{"type":23,"tag":185,"props":219,"children":222},{"href":220,"rel":221},"https://www.demographyproject.org/",[189],[223],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":224,"children":225},{},[226],{"type":28,"value":227},"The Demography Project",{"type":28,"value":229},", a youth-led organization founded by Richard Muraya in Kihumo village outside Nairobi, is receiving 50 monitors to support a school-based air quality network reaching 42 schools across Kenya.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":231,"children":232},{},[233],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":234,"children":235},{},[236],{"type":23,"tag":176,"props":237,"children":239},{"alt":178,"src":238},"/images/blog/openair-foundation/maji.webp",[],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":241,"children":242},{},[243,253,254,259],{"type":23,"tag":185,"props":244,"children":247},{"href":245,"rel":246},"https://www.majinigeria.org/",[189],[248],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":249,"children":250},{},[251],{"type":28,"value":252},"MAJI",{"type":28,"value":197},{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":255,"children":256},{},[257],{"type":28,"value":258},"(Media Awareness and Justice Initiative)",{"type":28,"value":260},", working in Nigeria's Niger Delta for over a decade, is receiving 10 monitors to expand its DATACAB monitoring portal into secondary schools and technical institutions in Rivers State.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":262,"children":263},{},[264],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":265,"children":266},{},[267],{"type":23,"tag":176,"props":268,"children":270},{"alt":178,"src":269},"/images/blog/openair-foundation/IMG_5226.webp",[],{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":272,"children":273},{},[274,284],{"type":23,"tag":185,"props":275,"children":278},{"href":276,"rel":277},"https://cityzens.urbanbetter.science/",[189],[279],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":280,"children":281},{},[282],{"type":28,"value":283},"UrbanBetter Cityzens",{"type":28,"value":285},", founded by Dr. Tolullah Oni, is receiving 10 portable monitors to support its youth-led, Africa-rooted movement for healthier, more climate-resilient cities. The portable monitors have now been distributed across the UrbanBetter hubs across Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":287,"children":289},{"id":288},"about-us",[290],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":291,"children":292},{},[293],{"type":28,"value":294},"About Us",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":296,"children":297},{},[298],{"type":28,"value":299},"In addition to us, the co-founders of AirGradient founding the Open Air Foundation, Peter Pihlmann Pederson joins us on the board of trustees. He is the founder of open.seneca, a Cambridge University research initiative designing portable, low-cost, air quality monitors, engaging in capacity building with partner cities, educating and engaging communities, and the calibration, analysis, and visualisation of the data collected with the low-cost sensors to aid with decision making. Peter is currently a professor of physics at ETH Zurich and works on the foundation’s research and development low-cost solutions for biohazards.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":301,"children":302},{},[303],{"type":28,"value":304},"The Open Air Foundation’s board of trustees is complimented by its formation team, consisting of project management and fundraising officers. In the future, AirGradient plans to transfer employees to the Open Air Foundation as well.",{"type":23,"tag":36,"props":306,"children":308},{"id":307},"this-is-just-the-start",[309],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":310,"children":311},{},[312],{"type":28,"value":313},"This Is Just the Start",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":315,"children":316},{},[317],{"type":28,"value":318},"We sincerely hope the Open Air Foundation will grow into an organization that eclipses AirGradient in scale and makes a meaningful, lasting contribution to the air quality field. Creating a world where everyone can exercise their right to clean air cannot be done alone, so if you care about public goods, shared environmental data, and infrastructure that belongs to communities rather than to any single organization, we would love to talk with you.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":320,"children":321},{},[322],{"type":28,"value":323},"Thank you for being part of this with us.",{"type":23,"tag":24,"props":325,"children":326},{},[327,332,333],{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":328,"children":329},{},[330],{"type":28,"value":331},"Achim Haug, Dominik Schraner",{"type":28,"value":197},{"type":23,"tag":41,"props":334,"children":335},{},[336],{"type":28,"value":337},"& Peter Pihlmann Pedersen",{"title":8,"searchDepth":339,"depth":339,"links":340},2,[341,343,344,345,346,347,348,349,350],{"id":38,"depth":342,"text":45},3,{"id":85,"depth":342,"text":88},{"id":111,"depth":342,"text":114},{"id":127,"depth":342,"text":130},{"id":138,"depth":342,"text":141},{"id":149,"depth":342,"text":152},{"id":160,"depth":342,"text":163},{"id":288,"depth":342,"text":294},{"id":307,"depth":342,"text":313},"markdown","content:blog:openair-foundation-blog.md","content","blog/openair-foundation-blog.md","blog/openair-foundation-blog","md",1785488547524]