Air quality index, pollen counts, home meteorological data and such

Hi!

I was reading a note on how air quality has turned around given the sudden reduction of "normal" activities due to the Covid-19 situation (https://phys.org/news/2020-06-covid-air … dwide.html) and that gave me thought on a number of similar topics that have come up over the past 11 years on the ground here in Brazil that maybe a forum member might share interest.

#Air Quality Index (AQI) is something that is measured a lot in most parts of the world but not so much here in Brazil.
#Pollen counts are something that I was raised with given I was once highly impacted by hayfever and knowing pollen counts was important to getting through my days.
#Amateur weather data collection seemed to be something that a lot of people I was raised with did - I remember the little backyard aparatus that had a rain gauge, showed wind direction and supposedly velocity.

Living here I realized that a lot of family members suffered some respiratory ailment given that they'd suddenly have sneezing fits and the like YET there was absolutely no method to determine what it might be. They swore they had dome allergy tests that showed nothing and then applied the typical reasons for their ailments: had walked barefoot on cold tiles, drank water that was too cold, had consumed something "carregado" (and that's a whole other topic).

I'd ask about pollen data and they acted like I was from another planet. I'd wonder about whether they had air quality issues and they thought me silly as those problems only happen [supposedly] in rich nations like the U.S.A.  I'd dig for weather data and only find poorly populated info on wunderground.com that came only from local airport data sources. I requested info from university experts and they showed me that they have collection and data BUT THAT I would not be able to access it and could only request occasional downloads.

Maybe I'm the odd one out but I was raised with a LOT of this in my daily life and I attribute that more to the farmers and curious citizen scientists than to some other formal plan. Obviously there was a time in Wisconsin when data was harder to get BUT that was a long time ago and one would think that there'd be some tendency to follow the lead of other countries here in Brazil. And the idea of sharing data that might be useful to others seems lost on many here.

My question: anyone here in Brazil on expat doing any data collection on pollen (kinda doubt that because it requires lab analysis), air quality (there are a number of tools for sale) or meteorology (I want one but would like to source it in Brazil).

FYI rain from 10 a.m. yesterday to today 10 a.m. was 9mm (0.35 inches) and a monthly total of 71.025mm, year to date 352.59mm or 13.88 inches. 235mm in 2019 during the same period.