Air pollution is a serious problem for all big cities and in London, in the last three days, went stage a fresh test: a patrol of half a dozen pigeons, equipped with a sensor to detect pollution, it has dawned in flight from a roof of Brick Lane, to monitor the levels of carbon dioxide and ozone. On the back of the birds, a real backpack with a sensor for pollution and a gps.

A project with an online side, the @PigeonAir account, essential to revive the information on air quality and raise public awareness of an urgent and crucial issue, especially in a world metropolis.

The bird mission ended Wednesday, with the return to the base: the idea of Pigeon Air Patrol was honored at last year's London Design Festival and was inspired by the use of pigeons that already during the wars were being used to send information. Their ability to fly relatively low but at great speed is a good asset for capturing the air values in the streets increasingly hyper-congested metropolis. Put to work the pigeons, animals do not always much appreciated, then it served to get a picture of the level of pollution of the areas under investigation, and the experiment is not sorry at all to those who wanted to know how he put his share of the city.

From Wired