Dyson Investigates Air Quality: Bristol Pride

For the 4^th year running, Dyson was the main sponsor at Bristol Pride. At Dyson, we’re proud to celebrate our people, from all backgrounds. Every year, Dyson people around the world attend and support Pride Events local to their communities through our internal PROUD Network.

Bristol Pride has sustainability in mind when planning the annual Pride event. It is one of the few Pride organisations that does not allow motorised vehicles along the parade route, considering air quality and supporting the new Clean Air Zones in Bristol City Centre.

This year, Dyson asked two volunteers from its internal PROUD Network to wear the Dyson Air Quality Backpack to compare the levels of pollutants in the air along the parade route before and during the parade, when there are cars on the road during a normal day vs. during the precession in which there are no motorised vehicles along the route.

Our volunteers, Orestis Papatryfonos (RDD Intern) and Simran Sanghera (Associate Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Manager), wore the Dyson Air Quality backpacks with the connected Dyson Air Quality App, to investigate air quality in Bristol. The Dyson Air Quality backpack was developed by Dyson Engineers and uses the same sensing technology as Dyson Air Purifiers for the home. These backpacks are not available to purchase but are used around the globe, from Tokyo to Toronto to investigate air quality for a variety of research projects including studying athletes exposure to pollution before the Tokyo Olympics and a variety of school projects to understand children’s exposure to pollutants on their daily route to school.

Our volunteers found that the air quality in the city centre was worse on Friday, the day before Bristol Pride noticing spikes from construction works and traffic, with street food vendors close to the parade route also creating an increase in pollutants. During the parade route, the air quality was good with no vehicles along the route. The participants were able to see this with the Dyson Air Quality Backpack’s compatible app, which uses GPS to determine your location and connects to the backpack via Bluetooth, able to show you live data about the air quality around you as you walk.

Festivals do have a high carbon footprint, but we do a lot of work to make sure Bristol Pride is sustainable. For example, we’ve banned any vehicles from being in the Parade. This Dyson air quality backpack is important because it gives you real-time data of someone walking around the city and with the Dyson partnership, I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.