New York City's official air monitors are too sparse to capture how pollution changes from block to block. Here is how community organizations mapped their own air, and what they found.

Community groups in New York City strapped on wearable sensors and uncovered what official monitors had missed for years. In predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods, air pollution ran up to twenty times higher than expected. This is how they proved it, block by block.

Why official monitors miss New York City’s air pollution

Air pollution in New York City can change dramatically from minute to minute and block to block. The New York State air monitoring network cannot capture this variation. It runs just over a dozen stations across the entire city.

A report shows how the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and its community-based member organizations filled that gap. Members carried AirBeams through their daily routines and used AirCasting to record pollution at street level, building a block-by-block picture the state network could never produce.

What is hyperlocal air pollution?

Hyperlocal air pollution is the way air quality changes over very short distances, sometimes from one block to the next. A busy intersection, a highway, or a single industrial site can make the air far more polluted than a monitor a mile away would suggest.

Official monitors are built to track regional trends, not the air outside your front door. They are few in number, and they average their readings over large areas and long periods. That is useful for policy, but it hides the sharp, local differences that shape what people actually breathe every day. Wearable sensors close that gap. By carrying a monitor through their daily routines, residents can map pollution exactly where they live, work, and walk. The colored dots on the AirCasting map show that picture in real time.

Air pollution and environmental injustice in New York City

In New York City, historic and ongoing discrimination in housing access, and racist land use planning, has concentrated polluting facilities in low-income communities of color. Peaker power plants, garbage transfer stations, concrete batch plants, and warehouses cluster in these neighborhoods.

By measuring the air with wearable sensors, and connecting what they breathe to the facilities around them, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and its member organizations documented these disproportionate exposures. Their report charts a path toward cleaner air for all New Yorkers, with specific policy recommendations.

Read the full report from the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, and Politico’s coverage of the findings.

How to see the air in your own neighborhood

You do not need to be a scientist or a large organization to do this. The AirBeam Mini is a small, wearable sensor that measures PM2.5 in real time and maps it as you move. Carry it on your commute, around your block, or through your home, and you can see your own hyperlocal air, the way New York’s communities saw theirs.

Every reading also adds to the shared AirCasting map, building a fuller picture of air quality for everyone. Clean air is a right, not a privilege, and measuring it is the first step toward protecting it.

Frequently asked questions

What is hyperlocal air pollution? Hyperlocal air pollution is the way air quality changes over very short distances, sometimes from one block to the next, driven by nearby sources like traffic and industry.

How did New York City communities measure their air? Community organizations used wearable AirBeam sensors and the AirCasting platform to record pollution at street level as members moved through their neighborhoods.

Can I measure the air quality in my own neighborhood? Yes. A personal monitor like the AirBeam Mini lets anyone track PM2.5 in real time and map it, with no scientific background required.

Want to see the air in your neighborhood? Get your AirBeam Mini.