*Editor’s note: This article is the first in an intermittent series The Chronicle is writing taking a look at Pittsburgh public resources that people may not be aware of.
In 2016, the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) CREATE Lab, with support from the Heinz Endowments, launched Smell Pittsburgh, a free app that enables residents to report foul smells in the air and what symptoms they are experiencing as a result. The goal? To give researchers a way to track air pollution in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and how it travels.
Now, 10 years later, the app is still up and running, and has proven a valuable tool for environmental advocacy.
“It’s been a real success,” said Phil Johnson, senior program director for climate, environment and health at Heinz Endowments. “I think (the app’s longevity) reflects the nature of long-term problems and challenges. It’s not a simple thing to address chronic sources of pollution in an urban area.”
The app enables users to rank the air on a 1-to-5 scale, with 1 being the best quality and 5 being the worst. In addition, the users can describe the smell, mention any symptoms they are experiencing as a result — such as headaches, sore throats or eye irritation — and mark their location where they experienced the smell. The app then produces a map of the city, showing all of the reports for any given day, showing how dispersed bad smells are over the area.
Ana Hoffman, Air Quality Program Director at the CMU CREATE Lab, said that “crowd sourced accounts are something that environmental justice advocates have long sought,” so there was much anticipation over the app’s launch. However, the lab was “amazed” at how much Smell Pittsburgh took off and its continued usage throughout the years.
Hoffman does admit Smell Pittsburgh doesn’t get the same amount of usage these days as it did at launch, but she sees that as a sign that it is serving its function.
“We’re really happy to see that less people need to use the app, because in many ways, 10 years of air quality advocacy has yielded changes,” she said.
“I will be very, very happy if some day the Smell Pittsburgh app is not needed,” she said later.
Climate agencies have used data from Smell Pittsburgh, including a study done by the Allegheny County Health Department looking into Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) exceedances. An exceedance, as it applies in this case, is whenever the level of exposure to certain emissions exceeds safe limits, leading to potential health problems and even death.
Johnson called the app a “communication tool” that gets air quality data out to a variety of sources, helping to shape air cleanliness efforts.
“It communicates to decision makers and policy makers, air quality regulators and academics,” he said. “It also communicates across society. It’s civic communication.”
Hoffman has found the app’s success to be a source of hope by showing how much people care about the issues of air quality and a drive to see it fixed.
“I feel hopeful about the way that the app has drawn attention to symptoms that people experience from air pollution,” she said. “I feel hopeful about the way people feel entitled about clean air and clean water. It really does actually feel hopeful for the future.”
The Smell Pittsburgh app can be downloaded through either the Apple App Store or Google Play store for free. For more information, or to view the reporting map, visit smellpgh.org.
