Having bad air quality can be very harmful for your health. Because of this, the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has created a scale to determine how clean the air is. This scale is know as the Air Quality Index, or AQI. The AQI is used to help people make decisions about whether they should take extra precautions to avoid exposure to unhealthy air. AIRNow has made this information easier to understand, and provided tools that make it easier for everyone to be aware of air quality conditions in their communities. In this blog post, we’ll describe how to use the Air Quality Index API to retrieve climate data and make your own useful application.
What is the AQI?
The Air Quality Index (AQI) measures six different pollutants: ground-level ozone; particulate matter; carbon monoxide; sulphur dioxide; nitrogen dioxide, and oxygen levels. Each of these pollutants has its own health risk. The EPA has created an index that combines all of these pollutants into one simple number so you can quickly see how clean the air is where you live or work. An AQI value of 100 means that the air is considered good quality. A value of 0 to 50 means that the air is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, while a value of 51 to 100 means that the air is considered unhealthy for everyone.
Using an API, anyone can access Air Quality Index information for the location they need. If you want to provide information on the pollution level in your city, for example, you can create a blog or an application using this API. You can choose the location using an address or coordinates. In this way, you will be able to offer information about the pollution level in real time and update your data every day or every hour. You will also be able to see it geographically, with a map that will allow you to know at any moment where there is high pollution and where there is not, and if there are any alerts in any area of your city. You can use it in any programming language there is, what they ask you is a ZIP code and coordinates, or an address if you don’t have coordinates and want to search it by name. They also have an option for historical data that allows you to look for data from 1996 onwards and zoom in on any point in time so you can compare two days or even two months. This data comes from EPA databases and monitors but also from
This API will retrieve the current, historical, and forecasted Air Quality Index of any location in the world.
To make use of it, you must first:
1- Go to Air Quality Index API and simply click on the button “Subscribe for free” to start using the API.
2- After signing up in Zyla API Hub, you’ll be given your personal API key. Using this one-of-a-kind combination of numbers and letters, you’ll be able to use, connect, and manage APIs!
3- Employ the different API endpoints depending on what you are looking for.
4- Once you meet your needed endpoint, make the API call by pressing the button “run” and see the results on your screen.
