Meet 'baby' Claire, explorer of Antwerp's bad air

Out for an afternoon hike, Veerle Bonaers and a friend stop pushing their baby and look down to their map, suddenly aware they have taken a wrong turn.

Their baby, Claire, dressed in pink slippers, doesn't make a sound, sitting snug in her blue buggy, winter sunlight touching her soft tuft of blonde hair.

Claire, an acronym for Clean Air for Everyone, is silent because she is a doll and wedged beside her are three electric sensors that measure the particulate matter that spews out of factories and car exhausts.

Her minders, though dressed for a trek, will walk 7.5 kilometres (4.5 miles) - about 10,000 steps - from the Antwerp University campus through Belgium's notorious traffic, which makes this small EU country of 11 million one of the most harmful polluters in Europe.

Referred to as the "silent killer", air pollution is responsible for about seven million premature deaths worldwide each year, according to the UN.

Among European cities, Antwerp was the second deadliest after Madrid when it came to exposure to nitrogen dioxide, the poisonous gas emitted by diesel autos.

Claire is the brainchild of Professor Roeland Samson whose research ropes in Antwerp citizens to help his team more widely measure exposure to air pollution.

"We have hundreds of parents and grandparents willing to go on a walk with Claire," the professor told AFP as he gave the day's walkers their instructions.

"This is very important because air quality varies a lot. If we just do one measurement in time we wouldn't have a complete picture," he added.

When Claire is in her buggy, traffic-related pollution such as soot and particulate matter is logged every 10 seconds. Other parameters, such as wind speed and time of day, are also recorded.

The plan is for Claire to go out daily until November, and volunteers are able to sign up on the university website dedicated to the project.