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Smog Project

Ongoing since 2025

Every winter the air in Lahore turns hazardous. We give school teams the instruments and the training to measure it themselves, and to write up what they find.

Why we started

Every winter the air in Lahore turns thick enough to taste. Schools close, PM2.5 runs past 150 µg/m³ against a WHO limit of 5, and the numbers on air-quality apps stop meaning much to anyone.

The Smog Project started from a simple idea: the students breathing that air can measure it properly. Teams learn how the instruments work and where they go wrong, collect their own data across the city, and write it up as research. The point is the method as much as the result.

What we've done

  • Supervised by the Dean of SBASSE

    The project runs under Dr. Walther Schwarzacher, Dean of the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering at LUMS, who also provided the teams' equipment.

  • Temperature and PM2.5

    One team found that temperature alone explained nearly 79% of the variation in PM2.5 in its readings (R² of 0.79).

  • Smog has no border

    A team from LGS measured sixteen sites across Lahore and Kasur. Johar Town at rush hour read over ten times the WHO limit, and Kasur, with far less traffic, still read dangerously high: pollution carried in on the wind.

  • Monitors in schools

    This year the project is putting air-quality monitors into the schools we work with, measuring PM2.5, CO2, VOCs, nitrogen oxides, temperature and humidity.

  • The schools we work with

    Aitchison College, Beaconhouse Bahria Town, GCU, Harsukh School, ISL Pine Avenue, LACAS Burki, LGS 55 Main, LGS Cantt, LGS Johar Town, LGS OPF, Roots IVY and SICAS DHA.

Learn. Measure. Then write it up.

  1. Learn

    Three workshops: why Lahore's air is so bad, how to use a PM2.5 tracker, measurement uncertainty, and how to turn readings into graphs.

  2. Measure

    Teams take a tracker home and record PM2.5 in their own neighbourhoods and schools through December and January, the worst months of the year.

  3. Write it up

    Each team analyses its data and submits a research paper, with its method, its uncertainties and what it found.

How it's gone so far

  1. Jan 2026Final workshop on data analysis, then papers submitted
  2. Dec 2025Two months of readings from across the city begin
  3. Nov 2025First workshops; teams take their trackers home

Past reports

Who runs it

  • Ahmed Sufiyan Siddiqui

    Lead

  • Amna Majid

    Lead

  • Rayyan Muzammil

    Lead

  • Abiha Fatima Malik

    Lead