AirTrack: Real-time personal air quality insights for athletes

To coincide with the UN’s International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, Air Aware Labs, a London-based start-up, have today announced the launch of AirTrack, a platform designed to help understand their personal exposure to harmful air pollutants and enable them to take mitigating measures.

Air pollution is a public health crisis and athletes and active travellers are particularly at risk due to their oxygen demand, increasing respiratory rate and prolonged exposure times.

Prior to the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, Respire – the French organisation dedicated to the improvement of air quality – published a study  highlighting the poor air quality that athletes would be exposed to, saying that an athlete will inhale between four and 10 times more air pollutants than someone at rest.

AirTrack provides users with personalised air quality data through an interactive dashboard which features real-time air quality data, exposure reports and scores, and activity visualisations.

Louise Thomas, co-founder and CEO, explains: ‘We are thrilled to launch the enhanced AirTrack dashboard, fulfilling our mission to make air quality data personal and actionable for everyone. Users can now identify air pollution hotspots they’ve encountered, as well as benefit from route and time-of-day scoring systems. Our product roadmap includes even more revolutionary features that will redefine how we think about health and the environment.’

AirTrack will be available in a free version and a Premium (from £2.50 per month). A Pro version (from £10.00 per month) is scheduled for release soon.

The dashboard allows users to access personalised data and maps which are specifically tailored to their activities and locations.

Dr William Hicks, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, explains: ‘By merging the latest in scientific research, high-resolution modelling, and cutting-edge AI, we’ve developed a user-friendly dashboard that allows everyone to understand their exposure to air pollution during exercise, commuting, and active travel with just a mobile phone or smartwatch – something that was previously unimaginable before we launched AirTrack.’

Air Aware Labs has been testing its product with athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Travis Bramley, internationally competitive cyclist, says: ‘It’s easy to immediately begin to understand how the air quality of your rides varies and from there unpick how you can find ways of breathing cleaner air whilst exercising!’