Israeli startup BreezoMeter has placed in Red Herring’s European Top 100 for the second year in a row in the “cleantech” category.

The Red Herring award comes on the heels of BreezoMeter receiving an EU Horizon 2020 grant to advance research into air quality in collaboration with Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

BreezoMeter, which ISRAEL21c first wrote about in 2014, uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to search through multiple sources of real-time air quality information to indicate how clean the air is around you.

Is the pollution level so high that it’s not safe to go outside for a run? How about pollen levels– are you at risk of an asthma attack? BreezoMeter provides that info to within 5 meters of your current location.

Lately there is evidence linking air pollution and Covid-19.

A study by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that a one-unit increase (1μg/m3) in long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was associated with a 15% increase in Covid-19 mortality.

PM2.5 particles come from sources including vehicle emissions, power plants, residential wood burning, forest fires and natural dust.

PM2.5 has already been linked to mortality in general, but the Harvard study found that the connection between PM2.5 and COVID-19 mortality is greater by a factor of 20.

In response, BreezoMeteris making its data available at no cost to research groups looking to explore the PM2.5 to COVID-19 connection.

The company has raised a total of $12.5 million.