EPA's AIRNow

US Environmental Protection Agency

About this app

The AIRNow Android application will provide an increasingly mobile public with real-time air quality information that people can use to protect their health when planning their daily activities

The app will allow users to get location-specific reports on current air quality and air quality forecasts for both ozone and fine particle pollution (PM2.5). Air quality maps from the AIRNow website provide visual depictions of current and forecast air quality nationwide, and a page on air quality-related health effects explains what actions people can take to protect their health at different AQI levels, such as “code orange.”

Ratings and reviews

Gives a different number between the app and the map. This causes issues for student athletes whose coaches only look at the Home and go with a number 20 points lower than the map. Right now, the Home button shows the air as "Good" at 46 and the Map shows it as "Unhealthy" at 169. Visibility is less than 0.3 miles. This app is as dangerous as the air.

I was a little worried about using this app after reading the comments. I downloaded it & it works well. All the information for my surrounding area is pretty accurate (sometimes the data in some points can be wrong but if you look at the surrounding areas, you will get a good reaading) If you hit the button that says smoke on the bottom left, it gives you a very detailed picture of where smoke is traveling from wildfires and where the most current wildfires are, along with air quality data.

Needs notifications and alerts. It's also a fair amount of clicks/taps to get to sensors near you if you're not close to an official EPA sensor. Purple Air sensors are shown on the map, and you can favorite them, but they don't show in your dashboard: you have to go back to the map and navigate to the specific sensor again. EPA, please make this app more useful for the public's primary use case --notifications.

What's new

This release adds two maps to give the public additional, actionable information about air pollution at their location: the popular Fire and Smoke Map, which provides information on fire locations, smoke plumes and air quality from monitors and low-cost sensors; and the AirNow Interactive Map, which shows ozone and particulate matter from air quality monitors across the country.