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Royal Society of Chemistry outreach projects

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For more information and resources see the Environmental Chemistry Group web pages

The Environmental Chemistry group of the Royal Society of Chemistry group has done a variety of outreach projects over the last decade. I was on the committee for 8 years and was Chair of the Group for 2 years and and then Vice-Chair for a year. I helped to organise the local activities with the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leicester and planned the stalls at the NERC Into the Blue and UnEarthed public outreach events that both received several 1000 visitors. See more details about the activities we do in this article.

I was the science lead on a community outreach project in central London in 2018 and 2019, funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, working with the London Sustainability Exchange (LSx). LSx has already organised a series of community engagement events through the Cleaner Air 4 Communities project and they measure NO2 with diffusion tubes; this new project will bring a more dynamic measurement strategy to the communities by using a network of small sensors with smart technology (from my research group in Santiago, Chile) to measure PM2.5 (Particulate Matter). The project involved local community groups and activists measuring the air pollution in their local area. Environmental chemistry volunteers trained "air quality champions" and helped them design an amateur air quality monitoring plan involving mobile measurements, walking around common commuting routes.

 In 2020,I have been giving advice to the Schools Clean Air Monitoring Project in Abingdon (SCAMPA) that has received RSC funding. I am helping with their monitoring strategy and giving advice and holding Q & A in these remote times. The project uses a mixture of diffusion tubes, home-made pollution testing devices and Raspberry pis connected to Particulate Matter (PM) small sensors and visualised on the Luftdaten website.

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Volunteers from the Environmental Chemistry Group where out in force at the UnEarthed event in Edinburgh in September 2017 at the Dynamic Earth exhibition centre (see article and  video) and the Into the Blue event (video)

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