Business

Dominique Adams and Edward Nkadimeng, AIrSynQ Systems

Every year, air pollution contributes, on average, to over six million deaths globally, according to the World Health Organisation. Greenpeace believes 42 000 died in South Africa in 2023 due to fine particle pollution. And businesses are left billions of rands out of pocket due to lost productivity. Yet air pollutants lurk undetected, often because there are few affordable solutions to uncover and track them. Now a local company, led by Wits university professor Bruce Mellado, who was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson particle, aims to fix that.

Set up in July last year as a Wits spinout company, AIrSynQ Systems hopes its new AI-powered platform and IoT monitoring devices will provide mines, hotels and other businesses with an affordable, largely locally-made solution to track air quality.