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Indicators / United States / Air quality

Days with unhealthy air

days · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AirData annual AQI by county, via airdata.dev · AQI above 100, counties with a monitor reading at least 180 days

Middle county, 2025
1 days
States with a figure
none county figures only
Counties with a figure
916 2025
Days with unhealthy air, the middle US county, 1980–2025The median of the 916 counties with a figure was 1 days in 2025, against 1 days in 2015; the counties with a monitor change from year to year.
01020304019801990200020102020
Indicator: Days with unhealthy air, days, yearly (AQI above 100, counties with a monitor reading at least 180 days); EPA days unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse; median across counties with a figure that yearSource: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AirData annual AQI by county (U.S. public domain), via airdata.dev county-aqi-annual, version 2026-10-26.271cefd8c0
Show the numbers (46 rows)
YearMiddle county
20251
20241
20234
20221
20211
20201
20190
20182
20171
20161
20151
20141
20131
20126
20114
20104
20091
20084
200711
20068
200515
20045
200312
200223
200118
200015
199927
199825
199716
199614
199521
199415
199312
199210
199116
199018
198915
198837
198730
198620
198521
198422
198330
198218
198120
198029

Highest and lowest counties, 2025

HighestStateDays with unhealthy air
San Bernardino CountyCalifornia110 days
Riverside CountyCalifornia109 days
Los Angeles CountyCalifornia98 days
Kern CountyCalifornia65 days
El Paso CountyTexas63 days
Doña Ana CountyNew Mexico48 days
Imperial CountyCalifornia44 days
Tulare CountyCalifornia43 days
Harris CountyTexas38 days
Maricopa CountyArizona38 days
LowestStateDays with unhealthy air
Baldwin CountyAlabama0 days
DeKalb CountyAlabama0 days
Elmore CountyAlabama0 days
Etowah CountyAlabama0 days
Madison CountyAlabama0 days
Mobile CountyAlabama0 days
Montgomery CountyAlabama0 days
Morgan CountyAlabama0 days
Russell CountyAlabama0 days
Shelby CountyAlabama0 days

Every county's figure is on its own page, in its profile table, with its rank among all counties and within its state.

Get this data

This page's numbers, as JSON:

curl https://visualizedata.org/data/us-indicators/us-unhealthy-days.json

Every place from airdata.dev (live, no key; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data, this exact version):

curl "https://api.airdata.dev/v1/county-aqi-annual@2026-10-26.271cefd8c0/download/county-aqi-annual.parquet"

Open the JSON

Source

  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AirData annual AQI by county (U.S. public domain): EPA days unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse.
  • 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.