Pigeons in London aren’t just pesky scavengers roaming the city. They’re fighting air pollution.

A special group of homing pigeons wearing tiny, lightweight backpacks were tasked with the job of measuring air quality across the British capital.

Plume Labs, a Paris-based company carrying out scientific studies on air quality, launched the pilot project, Pigeon Air Patrol, last Monday. The company worked with atmospheric scientists at Imperial College London to develop the little backpack air monitors.

The pigeons were outfitted with tiny sensors that measure ozone and nitrogen dioxide levels then released throughout the city. Over the course of three days, they measured harmful emissions that aren’t always visible to the naked eye. The results reported on Twitter ranged from “moderate” to “extreme.” Londoners could get updates on local pollution data by tweeting @PigeonAir.

The Pigeon Air Patrol complemented the company’s Plume Air Report, which collects pollution data from monitoring sites in 40 countries and makes the information available to residents along with advice on how to avoid overexposure in real time.

The data is particularly important in London. The city is one of the most polluted in Europe, largely because of diesel exhaust from vehicles.

Polluted air is linked to 9,500 premature deaths in London. Around the world air pollution is responsible for almost 7 million premature deaths.

Air pollution is a global problem (since air knows no border). Creative ideas like the Pigeon Air Patrol can lead the way in saving lives and protecting the environment by improving monitoring.

"Millions of people die every year around the world from air pollution -- it's basically a pandemic, but we have a hard time realizing this because it's largely invisible," Romaine Lacombe, the CEO of Plume Labs told CNN.

The Pigeon Air Patrol aimed to increase awareness of daily exposure to pollution, an issue many city-dwellers don't take seriously enough according to Lacombe.

While the pigeon project only ran for three days, Plume Labs hopes to put lightweight pollution sensors on people some day. They're using a crowdfunding site to recruit 100 Londoners to test the devices as they move about the city over the coming months.

And the pigeons aren’t done with their job just yet. They might be used to tweet real-time pollution alerts in other large cities.

TopicsEnvironmentPollutionUKEuropeLondonair pollution

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