Worst air day (highest AQI)

Source

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AirData annual AQI by county (U.S. public domain): EPA max AQI.
• Read through airdata.dev, dataset county-aqi-annual, version 2026-10-26.271cefd8c0; its 47 input files from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are named with their sha256 in this page's data, and the site's checks recompute every figure from them.
• A year counts once it is over, for counties whose monitors gave an AQI on at least 180 days; EPA's file for the current year is partial. A county without a monitor has no figure, and one monitor can stand for a large county. Fine-particle (PM2.5) monitors only spread from 1999, and EPA has since tightened the AQI scale for ozone and fine particles, so a long trend mixes changes in the air with changes in what is measured and how.
• EPA refreshes its annual files twice a year; a year is final about May of the next.
• 12 areas in the source are not places in the geo registry and are left out: us-county-02261, us-county-09001, us-county-09003, us-county-09005, us-county-09007, us-county-09009, us-county-09011, us-county-09013, us-county-09015, us-county-78010, us-county-78020, us-county-78030 (Connecticut's former counties, retired Alaska and South Dakota codes, the Virgin Islands).
• Built 2026-10-27.