Question: How is pollution measured? Like you measure earthquakes on the Richter Magnitude scale? Is it the same sort of thing?

Liza Selley answered on 4 Jun 2018:

Hi Morgandodd

We measure air pollution at monitoring stations all across the country. Air pollution can be split broadly into gases and particles. The gases are detected by sensors and the particles collect on filters before being counted in the lab. We are usually interested to see how much gas or how many particles have been detected on an hourly, daily or annual basis because this tells us whether the pollution has reached an illegally high level.

The results from these measurements get presented to the public as a score on the Air Quality Index (which would be the equivalent of the Richter Scale). If the pollution level is very high, people who are naturally more sensitive to air pollution exposure (e.g. people with asthma)are advised to avoid exercising outside or to consider wearing a mask.