I’m not sure if I’ve become over or under-obsessed with air quality. For one thing, it is very important. On the other hand, so what? There have been many, many runs and bike rides I’ve decided not to do. That’s what I want to think and I think I may be right.

Yesterday, I decided to chase the council about air quality again. There’s a monitoring station which is not showing any data. It’s nothing to do with them and I have chased Defra, who are responsible for running it. Something gives me the feeling that I am the only person chasing this up. It’s important, because if it’s bad, we need to know.

The council also informed me about some pockets of air pollution in the town where I live. On this occasion, I decided not to ask about the size of these pockets and how many there were. Luckily (or unluckily) I live next to one and it has an official monitoring station. And being an official site it has publicly available data.

There’s a problem with air quality monitoring. That problem is that not everything is measured, and some data is the mean of a 24 hour sample. The sample I’m looking at is NO2, which according to the council is measured at high levels where I live. They even sent me a spreadsheet showing where NO2 is high. But when I look on the publicly available site NO2 has been recorded as LOW for every day this year, and for every day last year. This leaves me a little confused about how they know that there is a pocket of pollution. I replied back to make this point which effectively takes me back to my original point back in April. Why, when the air quality was clearly bad according to the AQI website was it reported as good on the council website? At that time the Defra readings were missing, but there was no way that my town would be a oasis of clean air.

I’m not waiting for a reply about this. I’m more interested in a reply from Defra about their data. I’ve been asking them on Twitter with no luck, so I e-mailed their helpdesk today. Their auto reply suggested that I will be waiting 14 days for a reply. My feeling is that the numbers would be showing bad news.

In my letter responding to the request to MP they stated that their advice is not to exercise outside when the air quality is poor. My problem is that I have no way of knowing when the air is bad. I do know, but that’s not the point. I now have some information that suggests which are the best parts of town to go for a run. My plan is to run in these parts of town and find out.

Watch this space.