EPA's AIRNow
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.”
Category : Health & Fitness
Reviews (19)
Good for a quick look at air quality. If you want detailed data, you'll need to visit the website. Areas with more sensors provide more data; so usefulness depends on geographical area. The app needs a widget mode to provide visual data of the home place without opening the app.
This morning under "Details" the PM2.5 is 208 and the ozone is 41, but the main page is showing 41! This seems to be a bug in which the app chooses the lower ozone AQI instead of the PM2.5 AQI, showing "Good" instead of "Very Unhealthy". Besides this show-stopper bug which risks the user's health, the app doesn't show the update time in on the main screen. It doesn't show a map like the web site does. It doesn't allow a manual refresh by pulling down like modern interfaces do. All that effort into trying to reproduce a gauge (which isn't even the most practical for the purpose), but the app can't even get the main AQI right and provide basic information. Fail. Might as well just load the site on your phone.
I wish it would give notifications when air quality is bad. I also wish I could put a widget on my phone for a quick look (rather than actually opening the app). As it stands, I think I'd rather save the storage space on my phone and just bookmark the website in a browser.
It is a good app for the Bay Area. However for Bishop, Ca it gives different air quality info than the source of it's data, the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District. Often this is substantially different with AIRNow reporting 2 levels higher. I'm not sure how they screw this up.
Repeatedly in accurate. Numbers do not reflect real life situations. As I write this it claims the air quality is in the 70's. Smoke is very heavy in the area. When I check a different app it says it's in the 180's. Big difference. Not good when people depend on this help stay in good health.
Absolutely incorrect readings. I can see the smoke outside my windows from the wildfires not far from us, but this app says our AQI is 18 and the sensors in area are all green. Our other weather apps show much worse AQI, I had hoped that going directly to the EPA's app would give a better picture but this app is worthless.
Too basic. No map feature, and it doesn't give a date and time of last update, two things that I find helpful on the website. I'm uninstalling the app and just setting up a direct link to the website on my home screen.
This app presents accurate real time data for my region. While I'd like to see better data resolution and forecasting/mapping/widget, this app at least provides the correct information with all of the priority pollutants factored in to AQI. Some other apps only account for particulates and present it as AQI.
Very useful app, easy to use and informative. Thank you. If there will be any improvements, it would be great to have a set of widgets (a current number of aqi, smoke map and/or similar)
THE MOST ACCURATE of all the air quality apps for current conditions in the US. It would be nice if it could give more of a forecast for more than just the next day to help with planning, and if there could be a history so you could look back and see if the air had anything to do with not feeling well. I get migraines and would love to see if the air contributes once I can stand to look at a screen. The more you know how things affect you, the better you can adjust for your health.
App is okay and can be greatly improved. It would be better if the user could select a specific sensor like is possible on the EPA fire.airnow.gov website. A map showing sensors would also be a big improvement.
Quickly check your air quality. Faster than the website, less data. Smoke, dust, ozone. Smoke & air map lags the dial data. Loads slow, too. Check the map around you to detect occasional sensor fails. See smoke banks or streamers on the horizon? Check the sensors that way on the map. If the data isn't bad, the smoke may up too high up to impact ground level air. Or will show up next hour. Sensors update hourly. News media doesn't. And they use this data. It's official.
I go to the airnow web site for the fire and smoke maps. This app does not have that. Only shows local air quality, which I can get from a dozen other sources. EPA, please make this app more useful by adding fire and smoke maps. I'll check back for that. But for now now worthy of being on my device.
There are no maps like they show on the website. Smoke patterns from a fire can be seen on the airnow.gov website which is helpful for outdoor recreation activities. I am uninstalling the app and bookmarking the website instead.
This app doesn't work, it says the air quality data is not available for any major city. I'm using AirVisual app instead, which shows all of Airnow sensors and thousands of other sensors from community members. Airnow has been wasting tax payer money when we actually need them right now in California. Why do we need to rely on private companies to give us that critical air pollution data??? That should be the job of the government!
Doesn't appear to be very accurate. I have an air quality device in my home, do to wife's asthma, it says the 2.5 PM is over 300 outside, yet this app says it's about 160 outside. Not sure where they get their data, but it seems questionable to me. Just saying. Other apps say the air quality count is over 400 of the 2.5 PM. So again, just don't trust this app.
A vital app right now. App doesn't know how to update/refresh. Example it's past 6pm now and I know the data is updated hourly and it still will only give me the info I got after 12pm earlier today. No means of trying to get it to update seems to work. This is critical info to have currently and this needs to work!
The air quality index for where I live is almost always inaccurate. It's not very useful when determining air quality. It would be great if they would make improvements to this app.
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.