Want to know the quality of the air you're breathing? Now you can find out: A new website lets you check the level of air pollution on the street where you live.
The website, air.health, from Aclima, allows Bay Area residents to look up air pollution and climate health information for any address in the region.
A new study in conjunction with the website found some of the dirtiest air in the Bay Area is in communities of color and that for 95% of residents, the air doesn’t meet international standards set by the World Health Organization.
For instance, Monday morning in a Pleasanton neighborhood just east of Interstate 580, the website found the levels of fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, in the air averaged 6.8, which is below the standard of 12 set by the Environmental Protection Agency but above the WHO guideline of 5.
In West Oakland, the PM 2.5 ranged between 9 and 12.
The website also measures the levels of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which is pollution from sources such as gasoline-powered vehicles and power plants. In the same area of Pleasanton, the NO2 levels were less than 4 on average, well within the WHO guideline of 5.3.
West Oakland's NO2 levels averaged 14.3.
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Aclima, a San Francisco-based firm, created the website using data it collects from a fleet of low-emission vehicles equipped with air sensors. Since the start of 2020, the company has been mapping every public block of the nine-county Bay Area, measuring the levels of particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide.
Pollution can vary by as much as 800% from one block to the next, Aclima has found. In Alameda County, 40% of white people live with levels of NO2 that exceed WHO guidelines while that rate jumps to 70% for Black people.
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The idea for tracking air pollution is that the data hopefully will lead to change in environmental policies, especially in communities of color.
"To take that data and use it … to help drive action to reduce emissions, protect health, advance environmental justice," said Melissa Lunden, Aclima's chief scientist, detailing the goals of the program. "Sometimes the data will show the effect of a source that had previously perhaps been appreciated to the extent that it was."
To find out the level of air pollution in a given neighborhood, Bay Area residents just need to enter an address in the box provided on the air.health homepage.
