You can't always see pollution but can you hear it? Aaron Reuben and Gabriel Isaacman have come up with a frightening way for people to feel pollution: They’ve made it audible. Over at the Atlantic, they explaine their bizarre creation: 

We created sounds from air samples (atmospheric particulate matter collected on filters) by first using gas chromatography to separate the thousands of compounds in the air (try it with markers at home) and then using mass spectrometry, which gives us a unique “spectrum” for chemicals based on their structure, to identify the compounds and assign them tones. Some compounds end up sounding clear and distinct, while others blur together into unresolvable chords. The result is a qualitative, sensory experience of hard, digital data.

Below is a creepy audioclip from Bakersfield, California which has the worst air pollution of any city in the country.

The chirps are “highly unsaturated compounds,” Reuben and Isaacman say. The low, buzzing sounds are “complex, saturated heavy hydrocarbons" which is what makes people ill. If you check the article in the Atlantic, there are more samples other areas. It's not a pretty tune. 

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