Why bother? If I can’t see the mountains, it’s really bad. If I climb up 2,500 feet and look down and see a sea of brown crud, I know it’s bad. If I smell ozone or smoke, I know it’s bad. It the car gets a layer of gritty grime in 24 hours p, I know it’s bad.
A combination of curiosity, teaching science to my boys, and don’t trust the government to report accurate and timely data. Case in point, after Fukushima, days later most of the US public reporting went offline. They claimed equipment problems. Very inconvenient. We are now seeing, if you dig for it that there is measurable radiation in the US, on the west coast, etc. I also recall in the military training to be a nuclear reactor operator how they first taught us to measure the radiation, then promptly explained to ignore the measures because you could subtract out for background radiation, local sources, etc. Therefore, even seeing 40 millirem per hour was not to be worried about. Sure. So, yes, I like having my own detectors to see for myself so that we can make informed, timely decisions. Like today, for example, wearing N95 respirators, even while indoors.
Yeah, ya gotta wonder how life survived millions of years without these gadgets.