About Us

Finding Inspiration in Every Turn

Our Story

“open the window, let some fresh air flow in”, “step outside enjoy our fresh air”, “walk around the room, have a breath of fresh air”, we have been told such sentences thousands of times in our life and in fact we have even been encouraged daily to perform such acts to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However how clean is this “fresh air” we are constantly fortified to breath in and could something we associate with being healthy and good for us, not truly be the case?

Pollution is defined as the introduction of harmful substances (referred to as pollutants) into the environment (National Geographic, 2012) and is considered one of the five main global issues in the world. Pollution has even been proven to be the cause of death for over ten million people globally and 3000 people in Lebanon yearly. The Greenpeace MENA Programmed Manager Julien Jreissati even stated the dangers air pollution levels in Lebanon imposes on one’s health stating that “air pollution exposes our societies to chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer” (Cherry,n.d).

However, despite such high numbers of death rates, little to no attention is drawn towards the dangers air pollution imposes on one’s health, and this is why LenSide was launched. LenSide is not only aimed as a means of spreading awareness but also to allow anyone at any time to be able to detect the air quality and infer whether the quality is up to their safety standard just by taking a picture of the sky and analysing the image through are small steps!

Our Procedure

We decided to take a picture every day for 40 days at sunset (started off at 6pm which changed to 7pm with the change in time), from five different locations: Deir Al-Qamar, Bayada, Rabieh, Dbayeh and finally Ashrafieh . We then gathered viable information like visibility, humidity, and temperature, to check how such parameters impact the images we attained and through this came up with a conclusion of how one can directly know what the visibility range and humidity level may be just by looking at the image taken of the sunset. Finally, since an association between visibility range and concentration of particles and molecules (Like NO2), was found, one can conclude the concentration of such molecules by knowing the range of visibility and humidity from the image.

Who is LenSide Targeting?

Although LenSide is targeting towards every Lebanese citizen, Lenside is mainly aimed towards people more prone to air pollution. This includes: