PM2.5
Fine particulate matter
68.9
µg/m³
- 24-h mean
- 29.9
- vs 24 h ago
- +177%
2.0× WHO 24-hour guideline
Fetching the latest hour from CAMS…
Fetching the latest hour from CAMS…
28.6139°, 77.2090°214 m elevationHour of Fri 30 Oct, 23:00 GMT+5:30Nearest CAMS cell 1.8 km away
Driven by CO — carbon monoxide. That is the pollutant currently furthest above its guideline here, so it sets the headline number.
1.20 mg/m³ · 8-hour mean · Satisfactory
29.9 µg/m³ · 24-hour mean · Good
35.7 µg/m³ · 24-hour mean · Good
39.7 µg/m³ · 24-hour mean · Good
33.9 µg/m³ · 8-hour mean · Good
21.6 µg/m³ · 24-hour mean · Good
A 0–500 scale on six categories from Good to Severe. It is the only major index that includes ammonia, and its PM2.5 bands are wider than the US EPA's above 100.
One set of concentrations, three national scoring systems. They disagree because they were written with different averaging periods, different thresholds and different policy goals — which is exactly why a single number quoted without its standard is close to meaningless.
US AQI
159/ 500
Unhealthy
United States Environmental Protection Agency
EU AQI
64/ 120
Poor
European Environment Agency
INDIA AQI
60/ 500
Satisfactory
Central Pollution Control Board
Cross-check: Open-Meteo's own US AQI for this hour is 86 and its European AQI is 69. Differences from the numbers above are expected and deliberate. This app applies the EPA NowCast weighting and the full 8- and 24-hour averaging windows rather than scoring a single instantaneous hour, and it uses the PM2.5 breakpoints from the EPA's February 2024 revision, which set the 50-point boundary at 9.0 µg/m³ instead of the older 12.0 µg/m³. On a low-PM day that revision alone moves the US AQI by several points.
Everyone may begin to notice health effects.
Expect eye, nose and throat irritation, coughing and reduced comfort during exertion. Healthy people can experience measurable short-term drops in lung function.
Serious effects are likely: asthma attacks, COPD exacerbations, angina and a real increase in heart attack and stroke risk on days like this.
Recomputed hour by hour from the same breakpoint tables, so the curve and the headline number are the same calculation.
Hover or drag across the chart for any hour. Times are local to the location shown (23:00 onward).
These seven are what the world's air quality indices actually score. Each card expands into what the pollutant is, where it comes from, and what it does to your body.
Fine particulate matter
68.9
µg/m³
2.0× WHO 24-hour guideline
Coarse particulate matter
109
µg/m³
0.9× WHO 24-hour guideline
Ground-level ozone
16.0
µg/m³
Nitrogen dioxide
66.5
µg/m³
1.4× WHO 24-hour guideline
Sulphur dioxide
33.6
µg/m³
0.5× WHO 24-hour guideline
Carbon monoxide
1,217
µg/m³
0.2× WHO 24-hour guideline
Ammonia
—
µg/m³
Not modelled at this location. Ammonia and pollen are only available inside the CAMS Europe domain.
Not part of any AQI, but they change how the air feels and what you should do about it.
Saharan / mineral dust
71.0
µg/m³
Aerosol optical depth
0.28
AOD
UV index
0.00
index
Methane
1,679
µg/m³
1.4cigarettes / day
Breathing the last 24 hours of PM2.5 here is roughly equivalent to this many cigarettes, using the Berkeley Earth equivalence of one cigarette per 22 µg/m³ over a day. It compares particulate dose only — it says nothing about nicotine or the other 7,000 compounds in tobacco smoke.
Airborne particles under 2.5 micrometres across — roughly 1/30th the width of a human hair. They are small enough to pass through the lungs' defences, reach the alveoli, and cross into the bloodstream.
Official guidance is written for a whole population, but the level at which you personally should change plans varies enormously. Tell the app who is breathing this and every threshold below adjusts. Stored only in this browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Organ by organ, at the level measured right now — unhealthy. Ordered by how directly the air reaches each one, so the lungs and eyes come first. Tags such as PM2.5 mark which pollutant is driving an effect here today.
You move roughly 11,000 litres of air through your lungs a day, and every particle in it gets a chance to land. Where it lands is decided by size: PM10 is mostly caught in the nose and throat, PM2.5 reaches the bronchioles, and the finest fraction settles in the alveoli — the 300 million air sacs where the barrier to your bloodstream is a single cell thick. Reactive gases work differently: ozone does not need to be deposited, it chemically oxidises the airway lining on contact, which is why it hurts to breathe deeply on a high-ozone afternoon.
4 further effects apply to at-risk groups — select a profile above to include them.
Years of exposure accelerate the natural decline in lung function, and in children stunt lung growth so they never reach full capacity — a deficit that does not recover in adulthood. It causes chronic bronchitis and COPD, and outdoor particulate pollution is classified by IARC as a Group 1 human carcinogen, causing lung cancer in people who have never smoked. Traffic-related NO₂ has the strongest evidence of any pollutant for causing new-onset asthma in children.
Your cornea and conjunctiva sit in the airstream with nothing between them and the atmosphere. Particles land on and abrade the tear film — the thin layer that keeps the surface smooth and optically clear — while reactive gases such as ozone, sulphur dioxide and formaldehyde dissolve straight into it. Because the tear film is your first defence and also your outermost lens, damaging it causes both irritation and genuinely blurred vision. Contact lenses make this markedly worse: they destabilise the tear film, hold deposits against the cornea and reduce the flushing effect of blinking.
2 further effects apply to at-risk groups — select a profile above to include them.
Sustained exposure is associated with chronic dry eye disease and chronic conjunctivitis, and studies in high-pollution cities find measurably higher rates of both. There is growing evidence linking long-term particulate exposure to glaucoma and to age-related macular degeneration, likely through the same oxidative stress and microvascular damage that drives its effects elsewhere in the body.
The AQI describes the air. What harms you is how much of it ends up inside your lungs — and that depends as much on how hard you are breathing as on how dirty the air is.
ONE HOUR OF WALKING
66µg inhaled
At 68.9 µg/m³, moving 16 litres of air a minute. That is 2.3× what you would take in sitting still.
CIGARETTE EQUIVALENT
1.4per day
Berkeley Earth's equivalence: 22 µg/m³ breathed for a day is about one cigarette's worth of particulate. It compares particulate dose only — not nicotine, tar or the rest of tobacco smoke.
IF THIS WERE YOUR AVERAGE
2.4years of life
Air Quality Life Index: each sustained 10 µg/m³ above the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ costs roughly 0.98 years. This assumes today's level is your lifelong average, which one day's data cannot tell you — read it as the stake, not a prediction.
Air quality swings meaningfully over the next 24 hours. Shifting when you exercise is the cheapest way to cut your dose — no mask, no gym membership, just a different hour.
Typical daily rhythms: ozone builds through the afternoon in sunlight and collapses overnight, NO₂ peaks in rush hour, and particulates often peak in the evening and early morning when cool air traps them near the ground.