The problem nobody talks about
Air pollution kills 7 million people every year. That number
is not disputed. The WHO publishes it. Governments cite it.
Researchers build careers studying it.
And yet the data infrastructure to actually fight it does not exist.
Every sensor manufacturer uses a proprietary format. Every
government agency stores data differently. Every research
institution uses incompatible databases. A sensor in Accra
cannot speak to a hospital in Nairobi. A researcher in London
cannot access ground-truth data from Lagos. A government in
West Africa cannot build coherent policy from fragmented,
incompatible data sources.
The sensors exist. The data exists. But nothing connects it.
This is the same problem the internet had before HTTP. The
same problem medical imaging had before DICOM. The same
problem document sharing had before PDF.
Every one of those problems was solved by an open standard.
BXP is the open standard for atmospheric exposure data.
What BXP is
BXP — the Breathe Exposure Protocol — defines:
A universal .bxp file format that any device or software
can read and write. A sensor in Ghana, a research station
in Delhi, a community monitor in São Paulo — all producing
the same format. Instantly interoperable.
BXP_HRI — a composite Health Risk Index that incorporates
all available atmospheric agents with WHO-derived weighting.
PM2.5, NO2, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, VOCs,
benzene, formaldehyde — all normalized into a single
actionable risk score from 0 to 100.
A complete REST API specification for federated node
networks. Any institution can run a BXP node. Nodes
talk to each other. Nobody owns the network.
A privacy framework protecting individual exposure records
by design. Personal data stays local. Only aggregates
are shared.
Like HTTP, BXP is a format layer. It does not require
new hardware. It does not require licensing fees. It has
no central owner. Apache 2.0. Forever free.
The reference implementation is live right now
You can hit the live public node right now:
https://bxp-node.onrender.com/bxp/v2/readings
Or run your own node in under 3 minutes:
git clone https://github.com/bxpprotocol/bxp-spec
cd bxp-spec/reference-server
pip install fastapi uvicorn pydantic
python server.py
That is it. You are running a BXP node.
The full specification, SDK, CLI tool, and global sample
dataset covering 10 cities across Africa, Asia, Europe,
and the Americas are all in the repository.
The specification is permanently archived on Zenodo with
a citable DOI on CERN infrastructure:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18906812
Why open standard and not a platform
This is the most important design decision in BXP.
A platform would mean one company owns the data. One
company controls access. One company decides who can
participate and on what terms. When that company fails
or changes direction — and they always do — the data
infrastructure fails with it.
An open standard means nobody owns it. The spec lives
on GitHub permanently. Anyone implements it without
permission. A sensor company in Japan can write their
own C++ implementation. A Nigerian startup can build
their own Node.js server. A university in Kenya can
run their own node. Nobody needs to use our code.
They just follow the spec.
This is how HTTP works. Nobody owns HTTP. Anyone
implements it. The web runs on it. BXP is designed
on the same principle for atmospheric exposure data.
Who BXP is for
Developers — build BXP-compatible sensors, apps,
and data pipelines. The SDK is in Python. The API
is REST. The format is JSON. You already know how.
Researchers — cite BXP in your work. Run a node
for your study. Contribute to the spec. Every paper
that cites BXP strengthens the standard.
Institutions — run a community BXP node. Connect
your existing monitoring infrastructure to the
federated network. Your data stays yours. Only
aggregates are shared.
Governments and NGOs — BXP gives you the data
infrastructure layer to build policy on. Interoperable
data from every sensor in your jurisdiction in one
standard format.
What is next
BXP v2.0 is live. The reference implementation works.
The public node is running. The spec is published and
citable.
What happens next depends entirely on adoption. A
standard nobody uses is just a document. A standard
10 institutions use is infrastructure. A standard
1000 institutions use is the foundation of global
air quality data.
If you are a developer — clone the repo and run a node.
If you are a researcher — cite the DOI in your next paper.
If you are an institution — contact us about running a node.
If you just care about air quality — share this article.
GitHub: https://github.com/bxpprotocol/bxp-spec
Live node: https://bxp-node.onrender.com
Specification DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18906812
Contact: bxpprotocol@proton.me
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4856-4986
The air is public. The data should be too.
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