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The Philippines, and especially its capital Metro Manilla, is just subjected to Air Pollution just like any other countries in Asia.

Quoted from this overview from the 'Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources', the Philippines ranks 5th (out of 11 countries) at the Environmental Performance Index in the ASEAN Region (which includes Japan, China and South Korea). This other articles explains that "Pollution levels in Metro Manila are still higher than acceptable levels ...".


Visible Air Pollution on Manilla Skyline (attribution).
So, like most of the countries in Asia, there is no reason why there should not be real-time Air Quality monitoring in the Philippines, at least for Metro Manilla. The Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) (emb.gov.ph/portal/air) does provide a lot of useful information about the Air Quality. Unfortunately, the "Continuous Ambient Air Monitoring ... for PM₁₀" page (emb.gov.ph/ambientair) is not working (and has actually not been working for a while now). The best solution for providing real-time Air Quality information in Philippines would be that the EMB starts providing the official readings again. But while this is happening, the aqicn.org team is starting the "Philippines Air Quality monitoring project". Updated on June 18th 2015: Air Quality is now official available from airquality-embdenr.com.

The aqicn.org R&D team is now developping a new affordable Particule Matter (PM_2.5) outdoor Air Quality monitoring station, and we want to install a few of them in Metro Manilla (to start with). The station is simple to use, and requires almost no maintenance. It only requires a WIFI connection to operate (the power supply is provided by battery and solar panel).

So if you are living Metro Manilla, and you would like to help us, we are looking for people who can help us to host the stations. If this is you, the please fill in the form below with your contact information. Alternatively, if you are only interrested in getting the real-time data, or you would like to get more infomration about the project, you can also subscribe to our mailing list to get the updates about the project, using the same form below.

대기질 지수 단계에 대하여

AQI	지수구분	구간의미
0 - 50	좋음	대기오염 관련 질환자군에서도 영향이 유발되지 않을 수준
51 -100	보통	환자군에게 만성 노출시 경미한 영향이 유발될 수 있는 수준
101-150	민감군영향	환자군 및 민감군에게 유해한 영향이 유발될 수 있는 수준
151-200	나쁨	환자군 및 민감군(어린이, 노약자 등)에게 유해한 영향 유발, 일반인도 건강상 불쾌감을 경험할 수 있는 수준
201-300	매우나쁨	환자군 및 민감군에게 급성 노출시 심각한 영향 유발, 일반인도 약한 영향이 유발될 수 있는 수준
300+	위험	환자군 및 민감군에게 응급 조치가 발생되거나, 일반인에게 유해한 영향이 유발될 수 있는 수준

(Reference: see airkorea.or.kr)

대기질과 오염에 대해 더 많은 것을 알아보려면 위키피디아의 대기질 문서(영어)을 보거나 대기질과 건강에 대한 AirNow 가이드(영어)를 참조해보세요.

매우 유용한 베이징의 의학박사 Richard Saint Cyr MD의 건강 관련 팁을 보려면 www.myhealthbeijing.com 의 블로그를 확인하세요.