How to Use Google Maps to Find Fresher Air
The quality of the air around you has a big impact on the quality of your life. In addition to the long-term effects on your health, poor air quality can make everything you do much more difficult, especially for people with respiratory conditions.
But air quality varies from place to place, from day to day, and sometimes from hour to hour. If you want to check the air in your area and maybe find a place where it’s fresher, you can do so using Google Maps. Here’s what you need to know.
How to Check Air Quality with Google Maps
The air quality layer on Google Maps (both Android and iOS) provides information about conditions in your area using data from sources including the Environmental Protection Agency .
You can add an air quality layer to the map by clicking the button in the upper right corner of the screen and selecting “Air Quality”. It includes the Air Quality Index (AQI), a measure of how healthy or unhealthy the air is to breathe, as well as a guide to outdoor activities and the date the information was last updated.
How to watch forest fires
Even if you don’t live in a wildfire-prone part of the country, as we learned last summer , smoke from fires on the west coast can make its way to the east coast, resulting in exceptionally poor air quality.
To keep an eye on fire-related conditions, you can turn on the wildfire layer on Google Maps , which provides detailed information about active fires in your area using information from the National Inter-Services Fire Center (NIFC).
Another option is to use the Google Maps search feature to find “wildfires near me” and this will show air quality and other information about the fire. In the next few months, Google will also add US smoke data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to its air quality information.