What to Do if Your Area Gets an Air Quality Alert: Learn How to Protect Your Breathing

Concerns over air quality are on the rise nationwide thanks to heatwaves and raging wildfires, leading many to consider their safety. While it may seem like an uncontrollable consequence of the natural world around us, there are actually some tips and tricks you can do at home to protect yourself and your loved ones. If your area gets an air quality alert, here’s how to minimize its impacts. 

What is an air quality alert? 

An air quality alert is much like an amber alert or public notice, sent to a specific area to inform its population about a need-to-know issue. An air quality alert can be communicated in the form of a text message, through the local news, via a weather reporting app or additional community resource pages. 

What is the Air Quality Index and how do you interpret it? 

An air quality alert communicates the Air Quality Index (AQI) to its recipients, giving them a specific numerical reflection of the conditions around them in real time. The AQI measures five pollutants in the environment and assigns each a value. The pollutants are: ground-level ozone, particulates, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

After each pollutant is measured in a given area, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will use the results to offer an index between zero and 500 – the closer to zero, the healthier the air, with increases reflecting pollution levels. Visually, the AQI is represented by six different colors, ranging from green (the healthiest air) to dark red (the most toxic air). Spectrum colors represent increases in severity, moving away from green into yellow, orange, red and purple. 

An AQI under 100 is generally considered safe for human health, with recommendations for children and older adults to proceed with caution due to potential health problems. If the AQI goes over 100, an alert will be sent to those vulnerable groups of people – 200, and the general population should keep safety in mind in the name of public health. It isn’t until the AQI reaches 300 that an alert will be sent to everyone, indicating extremely hazardous conditions that should be approached with heightened caution. 

The worst recorded AQI was measured in 2021 in Salem, Oregon, with the index reaching almost 500. The year prior, wildfires near Portland, Oregon, caused the index to hover above 400, impacting distantly-located city San Francisco, California, to the point where its own index sat between 200 and 300 due to the wildfire smoke. 

What are the health impacts of bad air quality? 

Poor air quality can impact different populations’ health in a number of ways. Breathing highly polluted air, fine particles and particle pollution can result in: 

• Frequent asthma attacks 
• Nose, throat and lung issues 
• Consistent coughing 
• Wheezing 
• Impaired lung function 
• Eye and throat irritation 
• Burning feeling in the chest 

While the aforementioned health issues are difficult to manage, the impacts of regularly breathing bad air are immense. They include: 

• Breast cancer 
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) 
• Asthma 
• Lung cancer 
• Non-Hodgkin lymphoma 
• Chronic bronchitis 
• Heart attack 
• Chronic inflammation 

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The populations that should avoid poor air quality as much as possible are: 

• Pregnant people 
• People over the age of 65 
• Children 
• People with asthma 
• People with heart disease 
• People with lung disease 

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How to protect yourself from bad air quality 

While preventing bad air quality from happening in the first place is largely out of our hands, there are things we can do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from its impacts. Some tips include: 

• Regularly check the AirNow.gov website to get the AQI of your area. By using this resource, you can limit your time outside if the air quality is above 100, which is unhealthy to breathe for sensitive groups. 
• Opt for a well-fitted KN95 or N95 mask if you’re concerned about going outside during times of increased AQI. These filtration masks will help filter out particles in the air (some of us may still have some on-hand thanks to our COVID-19 days). 
• Use an air purifier at home to help clean out the air you’re breathing regularly. 
• Put your air conditioning on the recirculate setting. 
• Consider working out inside the gym rather than outside. If you exercise outside, try to avoid areas near traffic and roads. 
• Shower thoroughly after being outside for an extended period of time to help rinse away particles. 

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How to protect your area from bad air quality 

We can’t predict nor personally fight heatwaves, wildfires or other naturally occurring events that significantly impact air quality, but there are some proactive steps we can take to protect our areas and improve air quality. They are: 

• Consider cutting down on the amount of energy used in the home. If you’re not using an appliance, unplug it. 
• Opt for electric rather than gas-powered tools, such as a lawnmower. 
• Don’t burn trash or wood outside. 
• Carpool, limit driving or use public transportation whenever possible.