HOW RESPIRER IS TURNING POLLUTION INTO DATA

Respirer Living Sciences' detailed air-quality data is reshaping how cities understand, manage and cut pollution

- Samiksha Goel

According to the 2024 World Air Quality Report by IQAIR, a Swiss air-quality technology company, 74 of the 100 most polluted cities in the world are in India, including three of the top four.

When IntrCity SmartBus first decided to measure the air its passengers were breathing, the results were unsettling.

Inside some of its long-distance buses, PM2.5 levels were five to six times higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) considers safe, even though the cabins were sealed off by air-conditioning. PM2.5 is fine particulate matter, less than 2.5 microns in diameter, and is a pollutant.

"The AC was on, people felt fine. But the data told a very different story," said Manish Rathi, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of IntrCity SmartBus. As the buses moved out of cities, through industrial belts and construction-heavy corridors, fine particulate matter seeped in steadily, turning what should have been a controlled indoor environment into a moving pocket of pollution.

IntrCity turned to Respirer, a Pune-based air quality-focused climate-tech startup, for a full retrofit. Today, every IntrCity SmartBus functions like a moving air-quality lab. Calibrated sensors track PM2.5, the air quality index (AQI), carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity inside the cabin, while simultaneously sensing outdoor air quality through Respirer's city-level sensor network. That data flows into Respirer's analytics platform, which decides, automatically, when filtration needs to be ramped up and how air quality can be kept within safe limits.