What’s the Air High quality Index?

“What’s your AQI?”

— Everybody on the East Coast rn

With smoke from Canadian wildfires triggering air quality alerts in additional than a dozen U.S. states, hundreds of thousands of Individuals have all of a sudden grow to be intimately accustomed to the Air Quality Index, or AQI, a color-coded numerical scale that helps folks perceive the well being dangers and exposures to airborne pollution at any given time.

The Environmental Safety Company has a web-based dashboard (AirNow.gov) the place you’ll be able to sort in your location (or any location) to seek out out the AQI.

“The U.S. Air High quality Index is getting a number of media consideration proper now, however it’s actually implausible,” Dr. Brady Scott, a fellow on the American Affiliation for Respiratory Care, told Yahoo News. “As a result of you’ll be able to simply plug in your zip code and type of perceive the air high quality is the place you are at.”

The so-called AirNow system was created by the EPA in 1998 to function a “centralized, nationwide repository” for real-time knowledge collected by native, state and federal businesses, together with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Nationwide Park Service, NASA and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.

And the next Air High quality Index (AQI) measures the quantity of air pollution within the air on a 0-500 scale, with the upper quantity signaling a better focus of the next pollution regulated by the Clear Air Act:

• Floor-level ozone

• Particle air pollution (also called particulate matter)

• Carbon monoxide

• Sulfur dioxide

• Nitrogen dioxide

The wildfires in Canada are releasing excessive concentrations of fantastic particulate matter (with diameters lower than 2.5 micrometers, nearly invisible to the bare eye) into air that has drifted south, inflicting the AQI in states from Vermont to South Carolina to spike.

In New York Metropolis on Wednesday, for instance, the AQI peaked at 405, the very best stage since recordkeeping started, in line with an analysis of EPA data by Fox Weather. The earlier file — 279 — was set in July 1981.

Any quantity over 100 is taken into account “unhealthy” for delicate teams, comparable to kids or folks with coronary heart or lung ailments. When the AQI goes above 200, everybody, even these with out respiratory situations, is in danger.

Or you’ll be able to simply go by the colours.

“If it’s inexperienced or yellow, it’s OK for most people,” Brady defined. “When it’s orange, there’s concern that some folks, particularly these with respiratory situations, might be impacted. Once you’re within the purple zone and positively after we’re within the purple or maroon zones, everyone seems to be in danger, even if you’re a so-called wholesome particular person.”

In the event you haven’t finished so already, you’ll be able to look up your current AQI on the AirNow.gov website here >>>