Environment
The SateLeads' air quality, hay fever and greenness tool provides an objective picture of the external environment around locations. With this information, guests can get a better idea of what to expect during their stay at City Center Lodge.
Air quality
Due to its location in the environmental zone of Utrecht and the close proximity of several parks, the air quality at City Center Lodge is great even for Utrecht standards. For most of the year, the quality is rated good by European Union standards. In the periods when air quality does tend to be a bit worse, our booking tool will warn you well in advance.
Why are air quality measures important?
If you have sensitive lungs or cardiovascular risks
For the >500 million people with sensitive lungs, COPD and asthma, as well as the >500 million people with a history of cardiovascular diseases, exposure to poor air quality, even on a short-term basis can increase symptoms and negatively influence health.
If you are in this group, it is important to know what to expect during a visit so that you can pack appropriate medication and plan your activities in a way that reduces excessive physical activity outdoors in moderate or poor conditions.
If you do not have sensitive lungs
If you do not have existing lung and heart sensitivities, you can still experience symptoms when the air quality is poor or very poor. This can include a sore throat, sore eyes and a tickly cough. You are also advised to be mindful about the amount of physical exertion you plan for your trip when the air quality forecast is poor. Children, the elderly and pregnant women are particularly advised to be more careful in poor conditions.
Hay fever
10-30% of the world’s population experiences hay fever, which can cause uncomfortable symptoms for guests, most commonly in the form of itchy and runny noses, sneezing and nasal congestion. This may make their vacation less enjoyable, especially if symptoms strike unexpectedly. Our service allows guests from around the world to know what to expect so they can select the dates that best suit them or prepare accordingly by stocking up on kleenex and antihistamines.
Our tool currently forecasts 6 different species of pollen: alder, birch, grass, mugwort, olive and ragweed. At the City Center Lodge, peak pollen season is between April and September, with grass, birch and mugwort being most abundant.
Our metric reflects whether any of the pollen types are present in concentrations high enough to cause people issues. However, if you know which pollen you are specifically sensitive to, the following table provides information on when it is peak season for each species specifically.
| Species | Peak season |
|---|---|
| Alder | March |
| Birch | April - June |
| Grass | April - September |
| Mugwort | July - August |
| Olive | May |
| Ragweed | September |
Greenness
Research shows that spending time in nature has profound benefits for physical and mental health. Being in or surrounded by green spaces even for only 10 minutes at a time, has been linked to positive effects on mood and stress. Not only this, but according to the WHO, it is not only concentrated areas of nature like parks that are important, overall greenness of an area can have a big impact. Therefore, the SateLeads tool considers all nature in the surrounding area of City Center Lodge, not just parks but also streetside trees, grass and gardens. In doing so we find that the immediate surroundings of the Lodge are more than twice as green as most of central Utrecht.
About the SateLeads environment calendar
How should the tool be used?
Unlike with the weather, most of us do not have an intuition for what the air quality or pollen is like at different times of year, especially in different countries. So, while we might expect warm, sunny weather in Utrecht between June and August most people don’t know if it is more or less polluted during the summer, and if it is a risk area for hayfever.
Our data provides a general overview into the situation at your destination during the time you plan to travel. Similar to a weather forecast, our predictions can be off on a day-to-day basis, and should be seen as an indication. Read more about the accuracy of our data below.
How to use our predictions
The exact implications of local conditions will differ from person to person as everyone experiences the effects of air pollution and pollen differently. We provide this tool so that visitors can get a general idea of the situation at the City Center Lodge and act on the information in a way that suits them.
Air quality
| Band | General population | Sensitive groups | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symptoms | Advice | Symptoms | Advice | |
| Good | - | Enjoy the outdoors freely! | - | Enjoy the outdoors freely! |
| Moderate | - | Enjoy the outdoors freely! | Possibility of mild symptoms | In the case of symptoms consider reducing intense physical activity |
| Poor | Possibility of mild symptoms like sore eyes, coughing or a sore throat | In the case of symptoms consider reducing intense physical activity | Reasonable possibility of symptoms | In the case of symptoms, consider reducing outdoor physical activities |
| Very poor | Reasonable possibility of symptoms | In the case of symptoms, consider reducing outdoor physical activities | Symptoms likely | Reduce outdoor physical activities |
Hay fever
Even amongst hay fever-sufferers, the symptoms and experience is very specific to each person. The intensity of your reaction and your sensitivity to different plants will differ from others. We offer general advice based on the concentration of pollen expected in the air but some people will typically have more intense reactions to low levels of pollen while others only react to high levels. Our tool is most useful when you combine it with an understanding of how intense your own symptoms tend to be compared to other people.
Pollen concentrations can also change depending on the weather patterns for each year. If the Netherlands warms up earlier in a given year, the peak seasons will arrive sooner. We constantly update our predictions with the latest data to ensure better forecasts that include newer weather patterns.
What is the accuracy?
The aim of our tool is to help travelers make choices that will make their experience as enjoyable as possible. In order to make a tool that is useful and reliable for you, a lot of research goes into our data.
We make predictions about air quality and hay fever up to one year into the future so that when you book a trip months in advance, you can already know what to expect. Although it is not possible to guarantee the air quality on any particular day, the accuracy of our algorithms is already over 90% on a day-to-day basis and have never been off by more than a single category. With the aim of supporting a healthy public, we follow EU standards for health advice and are constantly improving our models in accordance with the latest guidelines and research.
Who are we?
SateLeads provides information on the surrounding environment of properties to people looking for hotels or homes. Using scientific expertise and the power of data we are working to make it easier for people to choose the right environment for them.
For more information on what we do and how we do it, view our website. If this service helps you and you want to stay in the loop on our future plans, subscribe to get updates.