Air pollution can frequently impact air quality during Southern California summers. Wildfire smoke, dust storms, and vehicle emissions can impact kids’ breathing and health both indoors and outdoors. For young people, especially those in pollution-affected communities, understanding what's in the air is an opportunity to think about how they can contribute to improving air quality in their communities.
The Southern California Chinese-American Environmental Protection Association (SCCAEPA) has spent six years giving young learners hands-on exposure to environmental science alongside working professionals (1). Three years ago, it added a dedicated air quality course to learn about air pollution and put sensors in students' hands so they can measure and analyze the air they breathe every day.
Development of the environmental camp
The SCCAEPA summer camp was built to cover "all different kinds of topics for environmental studies," said Dr. Xiang Li, who joined the camp's organizing association, SCCAEPA, in 2024. Topics of study included healthy water, the human impact on river antibiotic resistance, and turning waste into solutions.
But when he looked at the lineup that year, something stood out.
"There were no topics in this summer camp specifically focusing on air quality." Dr. Li felt that for an environmental program in Southern California, this was an educational opportunity worth advancing.
Dr. Li, a program supervisor at the South Coast Air Quality Management District (South Coast AQMD), saw an opportunity to make air quality personal for students by putting sensors in their hands—specifically, by having them deploy monitors at home.
"We thought about giving students a few sensors for them to deploy at home, at least one outdoor sensor and one indoor sensor," Dr. Li recalled. Low-cost air sensors bridged classroom fundamentals and the air that the students breathe by allowing them to apply what they learned to real-world air quality measurements. He identified this as "another pretty important aspect of environmental studies.”
AirVisual Pro Indoor Monitor. Source: IQAir.
How the camp structure spurred student engagement
The air quality program “Air Quality in Our Community” ran as a six-week camp, in June and July, with two-hour sessions held at South Coast AQMD’s headquarters. Classes met from the morning until noon, pausing for the July 4th weekend. That break became a useful measurement window for students collecting data at home.
The first session was instructor-led. Dr. Li covered air quality fundamentals along with sensor components, operation, and home setup.
"I was trying to give them some air quality fundamentals,” he explained. “We talk about the air sensor fundamentals, tell them about the sensor components, how they operate, how to set up the sensors at home, and how to collect data."
The students then took the lead from the second class onward. Throughout the remaining sessions, students gave their own presentations by researching topics like indoor ventilation, reading a sensor-based research paper on wildfire events, and ultimately presenting findings from their own at-home sensor deployments.
Event banner for SCCAEPA. Source: IQAir.
The program concluded with a group student presentation given to peers, parents, and members of SCCAEPA, held at South Coast AQMD’s headquarters (2).
Dr. Li hopes students walk away with skills they can carry into adulthood. He hopes that learning how to read a scientific publication, give presentations, conduct data analysis, and communicate research findings will be highly useful during their college years and throughout their future professional lives.
Collaboration through a shared air quality mission
This year marked the first time IQAir sponsored sensors for the camp, a step up from the previous two years, when the team used IQAir AirVisual Pro units sourced internally from South Coast AQMD's own group.
IQAir's sponsorship involved providing technical support and resources, including the indoor air quality monitors and providing an online dashboard and API access so students could download their sensor data for analysis. The camp's curriculum, structure, and educational goals were designed and delivered independently by SCCAEPA and its volunteer team.
Volunteer collaboration has been the key to the camp’s sustained mission. The SCCAEPA team spans distinct but complementary roles. For instance, Dr. Kun Liu, a committee member since 2021, handled the camp's operations, including syllabus design, outreach, marketing, and recruiting both students and coaches. Like many involved in the camp, she brings her own expertise to the experience. Her subject expertise ranges from soil and plant science to waste reduction; this year she coached the camp's waste solutions track.
Dr. Zihan Zhu, a member of SCCAEPA since graduate school, co-coached the camp by helping develop student projects and the indoor-outdoor sensor initiative.
"The summer camp is actually a really good opportunity for us to just to get to know these teenagers; to listen to them, to know what they care about, and apply this to our daily work,” said Dr. Zhu.
What the sensors revealed
The July 4th weekend and its accompanying fireworks became a natural focal point for student research.
Fireworks made the holiday "one of the worst PM 2.5 days in the region" observed by the students, Li explained, and they used their home sensors to capture the levels of pollution during this event.
Because students came from across Orange and Los Angeles Counties, the class produced a comparative picture of how pollution moves through the region.
"Students living in Santa Clarita and students living in Irvine probably saw the lowest PM 2.5 increase during July 4th and the 5th," Dr. Li said, "but students living in more inland areas saw a greater and delayed PM 2.5 increase."
That spatial pattern lined up with what students were learning about meteorology. Because the dominant onshore winds in Southern California carry air from the coast inland, students could see that mechanism reflected in their own data.
The indoor-outdoor sensor pairs produced a second strand of findings that hit closer to home. By comparing readings from both monitors, students could see how well their own homes were sealed against outdoor pollution. Some students found indoor-outdoor PM 2.5 ratios near one-to-one, suggesting open windows or poor sealing. Others found ratios closer to 50%, indicating a home better protected from outdoor air.
From those comparisons came a practical takeaway: opening windows can improve indoor ventilation but knowing what air quality is like outdoors is a necessary first step.
Conclusion
The SCCAEPA environment camp’s air quality program was effective because it treated students as capable investigators of their own environment.
Over six weeks, students moved from air quality fundamentals to deploying sensors in their own homes, analyzing real pollution events, and presenting findings to their peers. The camp's model of putting science fundamental first, then fostering student-led inquiry with air quality monitoring tools, helped ground the students’ understanding of the air they breathe.
