Why You Need an Outdoor Air Quality Monitor (2025)

It wasn’t that agelong agone that fewer group were monitoring nan air—not nan government, not its citizens. Today, upwind apps supply estimates of outdoor aerial quality, and nan government’s ain aerial value monitoring website, AirNow, has an easy-to-use zip codification portal and fire and fume map.

There are existent wellness benefits to owning an air value monitor. Each US authorities is responsible for processing its ain monitoring plan. Even successful densely populated municipality areas, outdoor aerial monitors owned by federal, state, and section jurisdictions mightiness beryllium geographically dispersed out, leaving monitoring gaps that don't accurately seizure nan aerial value beyond one’s beforehand door.

Outdoor aerial value monitors are not conscionable for knowing nan aerial value erstwhile nan odor of fume fills your home—an outdoor show tin support you informed. America has been successful nan aerial value monitoring business for little than a century. In nan not-so-distant past, citizens died owed to unregulated and unchecked air.

Once more, Trump’s EPA is seeking to weaken existent Air Quality Index standards, nan numbers that determine what is good, moderate, aliases unhealthy air, on pinch repealing nan regulations connected emissions of greenhouse gases. Those actions will lead to dirtier aerial and little reliable data. Like face masks and air purifiers, an outdoor aerial value show is nary longer a niche appliance but an physics canary successful nan modern ember excavation of a bad-air world.

Back successful January, I woke up to find my PurpleAir Zen outdoor aerial value show glowing agleam red. This happened complete respective days, and I was confused because nan numbers were good complete 100 and yet location wasn’t an aerial value alert for nan area.

The yearly AQI for my neighborhood is nether 50—considered bully air. For context, an AQI of 100 aliases much is unhealthy for delicate groups, and an AQI of 150 is unhealthy for everyone. I mentioned nan unhealthy aerial to a friend who reminded maine that New York City precocious installed a concrete recycling center a fewer blocks from my home. The literal dust-up nan halfway caused, including nonaccomplishment to pass nan vicinity astir its existence, mightiness beryllium nan culprit for nan caller uptick successful bad air, from nan concrete dust created by nan recycling center. At that constituent nan recycling halfway had yet to instrumentality irrigation to mitigate nan particulate plumes. The information from my outdoor show fed into PurpleAir’s crowdsourced real-time map. On nan map, I could spot different adjacent PurpleAir monitors, and nan ones closest to nan actual recycling halfway tended to person worse aerial quality.

Invisible Danger

In July, aft a twelvemonth of mounting protests and governmental pressure, nan metropolis announced that it would relocate nan actual recycling center. What would person happened if residents hadn’t seen nan particulate clouds aliases noticed nan grey movie collecting connected their cars? What if they couldn’t spot what was each astir them? PM 2.5 is nan invisible solids and liquids that are successful nan air. The tiniest shape tin participate nan deepest parts of nan lungs, passing into nan bloodstream. There, they tin origin a big of illnesses, respiratory distress, and cardiovascular disease.

In early 2024, nan Biden management strengthened nan National Ambient Air Quality Health Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter, a move that group “the level of nan superior (health-based) yearly PM 2.5 modular astatine 9.0 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) to bespeak caller subject connected harms caused by particle pollution.” This changed nan model of what is considered “good” aerial connected nan Air Quality Index.

Those EPA guidelines are almost double those of nan World Health Organization guidelines, which are a stricter 5 PM 2.5. Trump’s EPA is reconsidering nan Biden administration's PM 2.5 standards. To quote EPA administrator Zeldin, “All Americans merit to respire cleanable aerial while pursuing nan American dream. Under President Trump, we will guarantee aerial value standards for particulate matter are protective of quality wellness and nan situation while we unleash nan Golden Age of American prosperity.”

The Trump management besides wants to repeal greenhouse state emissions regulations. According to a connection from nan EPA, “The EPA is further proposing to make a uncovering that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired powerfulness plants do not lend importantly to vulnerable aerial pollution.” Scientific research states otherwise. And so, arsenic outdoor aerial becomes little regulated, it has nan imaginable to get dirtier and make people sick.

Too Close to Home

This past spring, nan smell of campfire filled my home. I peered retired my fourth-floor model to spot my neighbor’s forbidden occurrence pit 3 backyards over. I watched nan colors connected my PurpleAir Zen outdoor show alteration from greenish to yellowish to crimson complete nan people of an hour. When I logged onto nan crowd-sourced PurpleAir real-time map, I could spot that my outdoor aerial value was an unhealthy 160 PM 2.5 and that a fewer blocks away, aerial value was bully astatine nether 30 PM 2.5. There’s thing astonishing astir a occurrence pit generating aerial pollution, but I didn’t recognize really aggravated and localized that aerial contamination could be, moreover though I was 4 stories up successful a half-a-city-block-sized area. This is aerial value connected a microscale.