A Smog Blog by NASA

I remember an incident from early days of my PhD. I was travelling in a train and a fellow passenger asked me what is that I am doing? My reply was, "I study aerosols for their climatic effects". He was thoroughly confused. What he understood from the word "aerosol" was that I am studying gases coming out of aerosol-cans affecting the ozone layer. It was not his fault. There are very few places where aerosols scientist interact with laymen about their research. I guess still the situation may be not be very different from the perspective of layman when he or she hears word "aerosol". Beside aerosol's climatic effects, laymen have many reasons to know about aerosols, if not for the sack of curiosity, for the sack of his/her health. The obvious question is where to get this information particularly in a format that a layman can understand and use it without further processing it.

Few scientists and students from University of Maryland, Baltimore county have created a blog with the support of NASA to fill this information gap. They have named it "Smog Blog". Find out more about this blog from a video that NASA has created to popularize The Smog Blog.


Link to Smog Blog
http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/

Link to NASA video about Smog Blog
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/smogblog.html