Keeping up to date on the latest air quality conditions can be as easy as checking your smart phone. Here are two apps to download this wildfire season:
Search for OregonAir in your app store to download the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Index. Users can pull up weather data – temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation, air pressure – or view the list of pollutants DEQ monitors at a given station. Remember to select PM2.5 -- that's the type of particulate matter or small particles in wildfire smoke.
Search or scroll through monitoring stations, create favorite addresses, look at current air quality reports. You can even see what station has the worst air quality at a given time. Ugh. The app will also list any existing advisories.
Search for OregonAir in your app store to download the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Index. Users can pull up weather data – temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation, air pressure – or view the list of pollutants DEQ monitors at a given station. Remember to select PM2.5 -- that's the type of particulate matter or small particles in wildfire smoke.
Search or scroll through monitoring stations, create favorite addresses, look at current air quality reports. You can even see what station has the worst air quality at a given time. Ugh. The app will also list any existing advisories.
EPA's Smoke Sense -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is conducting a study called Smoke Sense to determine how exposure to wildland fire smoke affects health and productivity and to develop health risk communication strategies that protect public health during smoke days. Want to participate? Download the Smoke Sense app from your smart phone's app store. The app will ask you for your zip code, age and other information like how much time you spend outdoors.
EPA says the study "will be the first of its kind known to use a mobile application to evaluate health effects from wildland fires experienced by those who participate, and to test whether such an app communicates health risks effectively."
EPA researchers hope the data will help them better communicate to the public to protect public health during wildfires.
If you haven't already, check out the resources in the tabs across the top of the page. You'll find guidance for parents and educators under the health tab, maps that show current fires under the fire information tab, satellite images of smoke and current data under the air quality tabs and more. We'll continue to update the information on these pages.
If you know a site or an app we should consider adding, let us know.
If you know a site or an app we should consider adding, let us know.