The Air Quality Index (AQI) is used by various government agencies to report how clean or polluted the air is in your area. For example, you may have spotted this metric popping up in local weather reports and news outlets. The AQI can also be used to assess air quality in your home or workplace — most indoor air quality monitors rely on it, and so do many of the best air purifiers on the market. But what exactly is the Air Quality Index, and how useful can it be for monitoring air pollution?
Put simply, the Air Quality Index is a tool to communicate information about real-time and predicted air quality, and to warn against potentially harmful air pollution events, Chloe Fellows, founder of Haze Environmental, a specialist air quality consultancy based in Worcestershire, U.K., told Live Science by email.
