The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitors the air quality across the country on a daily basis. The EPA keeps track of air quality in more than 50 cities. The agency uses the Air Quality Index (AQI) to communicate results, which are given in the form of color-coded categories.
The AQI is an indicator that blends the results of several pollutant measures, including ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide concentrations. On a daily basis, the EPA updates the air quality index data by location.
It is possible that some pollutants are not monitored in your area or that some locations have no air quality information available. For example, the AQI is not available for remote areas such as oceans, deserts, mountains, or forests. Another example is that the AQI is not available for areas smaller than a certain size.
The AQI scale ranges from 0 to 500, with a 0 indicating good air quality and a 500 indicating hazardous conditions. We recommend that you use the API to track and report on your area’s air quality levels. The EPA website offers a number of APIs for monitoring air pollution data.
According to Wikipedia, an application programming interface (API) is a set of routines and protocols that software applications use to communicate with each other. These APIs make it possible for developers to build one application that can communicate with another by using the other application’s services or data. In other words, an API is a set of functions and procedures that allow two applications to interact with one another in order to exchange data or functionality.
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.
