The Manchester Urban Observatory has delivered a UK first for real-time pollen detection.

Biological aerosols including pollen, fungal spores and bacteria are ubiquitous in the built up environment and they can often be allergenic, impacting the quality of life for a significant, and growing, proportion of the population. The UK has one of the highest global rates of diagnosed asthma, affecting around 10% of adults; of the 5.3 million asthmatics in the UK someone suffers a potentially fatal asthma attack every 10 seconds, with over 1400 fatalities recorded each year.

The Manchester Urban Observatory is proud to announce that the UK’s first live pollen count is now publicly available through the Manchester-i open access data streaming platform. This UK first is achieved using a state of the art Swisens Poleno real-time biological aerosol spectrometer which has now been deployed at the Fallowfield Manchester Environmental Research Institute air quality supersite for routine monitoring.

Image credit: Timothy Dykes via Unsplash