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New Haven Air Quality

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Public Air Quality Monitoring

New Haven lies at the intersection of many important transportation corridors and also experiences air quality impacts from the regional transport of pollutants.  In addition, New Haven residents and families experience the effects of air quality impacts such as asthma and other respiratory issues.  As a service to the New Haven community, the City has installed 11 particulate matter (PM2.5) sensors around the City and near transportation corridors to allow anyone to see in close to real-time particulate matter levels (measured every 10 min) around the City.

Air Quality Dashboard

Air Quality Dashboard

Note:  Dashboard may take a couple minutes to load in a new tab/window due to the quantity of data

About Particulate Matter

Particulate Matter (PM) is fine particles suspended in the air that can travel deep into lungs during breathing and have been linked to respiratory and other health conditions.  PM2.5 specifically refers to particles smaller than 2.5 microns that are most likely to travel deep into lungs and are also most typically produced by combustion sources.  

 More information:

- US EPA - Particulate Matter

- CT DEEP - Particulate Matter

- New Haven Health Department - Environmental Health

Monitoring Locations

Locations were selected for their geographic distribution, proximity to transportation corridors, and availability of city infrastructure for power and data.

Air Quality Monitoring Locations

About the Sensors

The City of New Haven uses sensors from PurpleAir (www.purpleair.com), a common provider of low-cost community air quality (PM2.5) sensors.  The PurpleAir unit has two sensors for PM2.5, and the unit compares values from the two sensors for increased accuracy.  The sensors (Plantower PMS-5003) work by using a solid state laser and a detector plate to detect pulses of light reflecting off of particles drawn through the detection chamber by a small fan.  The size of the pulses correlates with the size of the particle detected.  There are a significant number of community PurpleAir devices in New Haven (map.purpleair.com) and you can identify City-installed devices as they have "City of New Haven" in their name.

Other Ways to Access the Data

There are three main ways to access the data from these sensors:

1.  Public Dashboard linked from this page (above) - this dashboard shows data from the 11 City of New Haven air quality monitors.  Click on the date/time range on the upper right of the dashboard to set date/time ranges back to the start of the data.  Please note that particularly large ranges (over 7 days) may take some time to load.  

2.  PurpleAir Map - You can see the data directly from the devices (along with many other PurpleAir devices installed by community members in New Haven) by going to map.purpleair.com.  However, only the last 7 days of data is available for 10-min interval data.

3.  Direct Download of Spreadsheet - You can download a spreadsheet of all data collected to date here.

About the Data

The data collected by devices installed by the City of New Haven is intended for informational purposes only, and is not intended for any regulatory use.  The City does not independently quality control, verify, or calibrate the data.  In addition, individual sensors may lose power, data connectivity, or malfunction at any time.  We will make every effort to restore the sensors as time and conditions permit in the event of data loss or malfunction.  Extended horizontal lines in the data typically indicate a connectivity or power issue with the sensor.  Email for questions/issues.