AirWindow turns an AQI value into a short, time-stamped action card. An AQI of 80 usually permits normal plans, 130 calls for caution by sensitive groups, and 220 is a health alert for everyone. The card is useful only when it also shows the pollutant, location, update time, data source, and whether the value is a current NowCast or a forecast.
What the AQI number actually tells you
The U.S. Air Quality Index (AQI) is EPA’s color-coded system for communicating daily outdoor air quality and associated health concern. It is a communication scale, not a diagnosis and not a personal medical-risk calculator. AirNow describes the NowCast AQI as a way to show current air quality using the AQI colors and scale.
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A single AQI value is calculated from a driving pollutant. That pollutant may be ozone, fine particles (PM2.5), coarse particles (PM10), carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, or sulfur dioxide. The averaging period differs by pollutant, so a useful AirWindow card identifies both the pollutant and the period represented by the number.
| AQI | EPA category | Practical decision |
|---|---|---|
| 0–50 | Good | Outdoor activity is generally reasonable. Keep the source timestamp visible so readers know how current the reading is. |
| 51–100 | Moderate | Most people can proceed. People who are unusually sensitive should watch for symptoms and may want to choose a cleaner time. |
| 101–150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Sensitive groups should reduce or reschedule strenuous outdoor activity and check whether the trend is rising. |
| 151–200 | Unhealthy | Everyone should reduce exposure; sensitive groups need stronger precautions and should avoid strenuous outdoor exertion. |
| 201–300 | Very Unhealthy | Treat the reading as a health alert. Move activities indoors or postpone them and monitor current local guidance. |
| 301+ | Hazardous | Treat it as an emergency-level public-health warning and follow current local official instructions. |
“Sensitive groups” can include people with asthma or other lung disease, heart disease, older adults, children, pregnant people, and anyone who notices symptoms during pollution episodes. The exact group affected depends on the pollutant. AirWindow should use EPA category language as its baseline and should not present a card as individualized medical advice.
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What to do at AQI 80, 130, and 220
AQI 80: moderate conditions
An AQI of 80 is in the Moderate band. Most people can continue outdoor work, walking, commuting, or exercise. If you are unusually sensitive, check the pollutant and the trend before starting strenuous activity. A rising particle reading during a smoke event can make the next update more important than the current 80.
- Keep normal plans if you feel well.
- Choose a less strenuous option or a shorter session if you are sensitive.
- Look at the “updated at” time and whether the value is a NowCast or forecast.
- Stop and move indoors if you develop coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, unusual shortness of breath, or other concerning symptoms; seek medical help for severe symptoms.
AQI 130: unhealthy for sensitive groups
An AQI of 130 is in the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups band. Sensitive people should reduce or reschedule strenuous outdoor activity, particularly when the driving pollutant matches an existing condition. For example, particle pollution during wildfire smoke may call for a different plan from an ozone episode, even at the same AQI.
- Sensitive groups should postpone hard training, prolonged outdoor work, or outdoor events when practical.
- If going outside is necessary, shorten the duration, lower the intensity, and take breaks in cleaner indoor air.
- Most healthy adults can often continue light activity, but should pay attention to symptoms and a rising trend.
- Check the next current update before committing to a long activity; a forecast does not replace the current observation.
AQI 220: very unhealthy conditions
An AQI of 220 is Very Unhealthy. Treat it as a health alert rather than a routine exercise decision. Move workouts, children’s sports, and discretionary outdoor work indoors or postpone them. Keep exposure as short as possible if you must travel outside, and follow local public-health or emergency instructions during smoke or other pollution events.
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- Cancel or move strenuous outdoor activity for everyone.
- Give sensitive people priority for cleaner indoor spaces and avoid adding indoor pollution from smoking, candles, or poorly vented combustion.
- Use the source, pollutant, timestamp, and trend to confirm that the alert applies to your location rather than a distant monitor.
- At 301 or above, follow current local official guidance as an emergency-level condition.
Why the pollutant and timestamp belong on every card
AQI is an index, not a concentration reading. Two locations can show the same AQI while different pollutants drive the value, and those pollutants have different averaging periods and health implications. AirWindow should therefore expose the driving pollutant, its averaging period when available, the location used, and the data source instead of displaying only a large colored number.
The timestamp answers “How current is this?” AirNow’s NowCast uses multiple recent hours of monitor data. It changes its averaging behavior when conditions shift rapidly, including during wildfire smoke, so the value represents the most current hour through a calculation over prior hours rather than a simple single-minute measurement. A forecast is a projection for a future period; it should never be labeled as current.
AirNow distributes current information through an API for app developers and other distributors. EPA’s Air Quality System (AQS) is the source to use for official regulatory data. AirNow reporting data are intended for AQI reporting and forecasting, while AQS records serve regulatory purposes. An AirWindow card can use AirNow for timely decisions and clearly label AQS data when an official record is required.
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How AirWindow should represent an AQI reading
Every observation or forecast should carry a compact provenance record. A practical record contains:
- location: the requested place and the monitor or grid area used;
- retrieved_at: the time AirWindow obtained the value;
- source: such as AirNow reporting or EPA AQS;
- pollutant: the pollutant that produced the AQI;
- aqi and category: the numeric value and EPA band;
- forecast_or_nowcast: an explicit label for current NowCast versus forecast;
- uncertainty or availability state: for missing, delayed, estimated, or otherwise limited data.
Place “updated at” beside the decision text, not behind a separate settings screen. Show the source and pollutant in the expanded view, and make the stale or unavailable state visually prominent. If the feed is delayed, return the last timestamped value with a stale-data label; never turn missing data into a reassuring AQI or silently imply that conditions are safe.
Do not hard-code EPA breakpoints without a version
EPA breakpoint tables can change when standards or calculation rules are revised. The current EPA breakpoint table is dated October 19, 2026. One named example is PM2.5 24-hour concentration of 0.0–9.0 corresponding to AQI 0–50; 35.5–55.4 corresponds to AQI 101–150. Those figures are from the U.S. EPA Air Quality System table for 2026 and should be stored with an effective date or table version.
Store the breakpoint version alongside each calculated result. When EPA publishes a revision, new calculations can use the new version while historical observations retain the rule set that produced them. This prevents a later software deployment from changing the meaning of old charts without explanation.
AWS design: from location request to action card
A small serverless service can turn an AQI feed into a decision without maintaining a conventional server fleet. The basic path is API Gateway → Lambda → DynamoDB, with EventBridge for scheduled refreshes and SNS or SQS for routing and notifications.
1. API Gateway receives the request
API Gateway is the public front door. It accepts a stable request such as a location identifier or latitude and longitude, applies authentication and rate limits where needed, and returns a consistent response shape. AWS describes API Gateway as a service for creating, publishing, maintaining, monitoring, and securing REST, HTTP, and WebSocket APIs at scale.
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Normalize locations before querying the feed. A saved place should have a clear geographic scope and, where possible, the monitor or forecast area selected for that place. Do not expose a user’s exact saved locations in logs or notifications unless the product requires it.
2. Lambda normalizes and decides
Lambda receives the API request or a scheduled event, calls the current data provider, and normalizes different payload formats into AirWindow’s record. Its decision function should:
- Validate the provider response and its observation time.
- Select the driving pollutant and preserve its averaging period.
- Distinguish a current NowCast from a forecast.
- Map the AQI to the six EPA categories and the corresponding action language.
- Attach source, retrieval time, breakpoint version, and uncertainty state.
- Return a response that includes both the value and the evidence needed to interpret it.
AWS documents API Gateway and other event sources invoking Lambda. Keep the mapping table in configuration or versioned code so editorial wording can be updated without changing ingestion logic.
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DynamoDB can store cached observations, user preferences, decision history, and source or breakpoint metadata. A record key can combine a normalized location with an observation time, while a separate preference item stores notification thresholds and delivery choices. Set retention rules for historical data and minimize location precision in analytics that do not need exact coordinates.
4. EventBridge refreshes on a schedule
EventBridge Scheduler can trigger refresh jobs at a chosen interval. The interval should reflect provider freshness and product needs rather than an arbitrary timer. A scheduled job can refresh popular locations, while on-demand requests refresh less frequently used places. EventBridge can route events to downstream targets, but AWS notes that it can add latency.
5. SNS and SQS handle notifications and spikes
SNS can fan out an AQI change to multiple subscribers, while SQS provides a durable queue for workers that may be temporarily unavailable. Use a queue when notification delivery must survive a transient outage or when bursts of smoke-related updates could overwhelm a downstream service. For the lowest-latency path, direct invocation or SNS may be preferable to adding extra event hops.
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Freshness, resilience, and privacy trade-offs
| Design choice | Benefit | Trade-off to disclose |
|---|---|---|
| NowCast | Represents current conditions using recent monitor hours and adapts during rapid changes. | It is not a single instant measurement and can change as new hours arrive. |
| Forecast | Helps schedule exercise, travel, and events ahead of time. | It is a projection and can differ from the next current observation. |
| AirNow reporting data | Timely AQI reporting and forecasting. | Not the same as an official regulatory record. |
| EPA AQS | Appropriate for official regulatory data. | May not provide the fastest operational update for a consumer alert. |
| EventBridge routing | Managed event distribution and scheduled jobs. | Can introduce latency. |
| SNS/SQS path | Fan-out through SNS and durable processing through SQS. | Adds components to operate and monitor. |
| Saved locations | Enables threshold alerts without repeated searches. | Requires clear retention, access control, and deletion policies for location data. |
Measure end-to-end latency from provider timestamp to card display, not just Lambda execution time. Monitor stale-data rate, provider errors, queue age, notification failures, and the percentage of responses carrying an explicit uncertainty state. A fast response containing an old observation is not a fresh alert.
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The provider is unavailable
Serve the last timestamped value only if it is still useful, label it stale, and state when it was retrieved. If no usable value exists, return “AQI unavailable” with the reason rather than a zero or a default category.
The location has no current monitor
Explain whether the result comes from a nearby monitor, a forecast grid, or no source at all. Do not imply that a nearby location is identical, especially during localized smoke or ozone events.
The AQI jumps quickly
Display the pollutant and NowCast status so users can see why a value changed. During rapidly changing smoke conditions, the adaptive averaging behavior can respond differently from a fixed multi-hour average.
A notification arrives late
Include the observation time in the notification text and recheck the current value when the user opens the card. Queue age and delivery time should be logged separately from the provider’s measurement time.
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The first line should combine the value and category, for example “AQI 130 — Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.” The next line should state the decision: “Sensitive groups: reduce or reschedule strenuous outdoor activity.” Under that, show location, driving pollutant, NowCast or forecast label, source, and updated time. An expandable details panel can show concentration, averaging period, breakpoint version, and the previous reading.
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Use color as a supplement, not the only signal. Pair each band with text and an icon or pattern so the card remains understandable for people with color-vision deficiencies and in low-contrast conditions. Keep the emergency-level wording for 301+ distinct from ordinary warning copy.
What AirWindow can and cannot promise
AirWindow can reduce the work of translating an index into a sensible next step, expose where and when the number came from, and send a threshold alert through AWS. It cannot diagnose illness, guarantee that every street has the same air quality, or make a forecast certain. Readers should use current local official guidance for emergencies and seek medical advice for personal health decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an AQI of 100 safe to exercise outside?
AQI 100 is the top of the Moderate band. Most people can usually continue planned activity, while unusually sensitive people should check the pollutant, watch for symptoms, and consider a less strenuous or later session.
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AQI 201–300 is Very Unhealthy. Move strenuous activities indoors or postpone them, reduce exposure for everyone, and follow current local public-health guidance, especially during smoke events.
Is AirWindow showing current air or a forecast?
The card should state “NowCast” for a current AirNow-based value and “forecast” for a projected period. It should also show the provider timestamp and retrieval time.
How often does the air-quality number update?
The update interval depends on the upstream feed and AirWindow’s refresh schedule. AirNow’s NowCast uses multiple recent hours and can change its averaging behavior when conditions shift rapidly, so the timestamp is more informative than a promised fixed interval.
Can AWS turn an AQI reading into an alert?
Yes. API Gateway can accept requests, Lambda can normalize the feed and map the AQI to action language, DynamoDB can cache observations and preferences, and EventBridge with SNS or SQS can schedule refreshes and route notifications.
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