Last year, almost 7 million people died from diseases caused by air pollution. Nearly 10,000 of those deaths were in London.

Plume Labs’ new technology can help control personal exposure to air pollution, but since air pollution is complicated and almost invisible, we needed to make it impossible to ignore.

Naturally, we turned to the world’s first flock of avian environmental crusaders—the Pigeon Air Patrol.

The Patrol, equipped with Plume’s tiny air-pollution sensors, monitored air quality in real time—sharing results live on Twitter as they flew.

The Pigeon Air Patrol not only made the subject of air pollution more accessible, more people wanted to talk about it, and 93% said they cared more about it.

The story was covered by over 2,000 global news outlets and started over 40,000 conversations online, leading to 667 million impressions. What's more, the campaign led to a successful crowdfunder, raising more than £10,000 inside 3 days. 

Data. Feathers. Technology. The Pigeon Air Patrol.