PurpleAir CEO Adrian Dybwald said, “We feel glad to be able to help people measure and understand where the smoke is, how far it is traveling and where they might go to get clean air. But it is a very strange feeling when your business does well in the middle of such tragedies.”
PurpleAir derives its data from its air quality sensors which are produced in Draper, Utah which fetch a price of $199 to $279 per sensor. While the company only employs 12 people, there are over 9,000 PurpleAir sensors installed around the globe. Their air quality map can be utilized for free.
The purple-maroon color signifies that air quality is at its worst, posing a significant risk to any individual caught within it for a period of 24 hours or more. Reading on the PurpleAir website appears to be worse than AirNow ratings provided by the EPA and NASA.
According to IQAir CEO for North America Glory Dolphin Hammes, their platform received over a million new visitors from Aug. 17 to Sep. 10 when fires began breaking out across California. Throughout that same period, visitors from Oregon and Washington wanting to track air quality rose by a staggering 18,000% and 38,000%.
