The 2021 skyline from Peak Park overlooking Signal Hill Harbor is very hazy during the harsh wildfire season. Photo: Brittany Murray (Getty Images)
If you don’t live in a densely populated area, it can be much more difficult to measure the air quality outside.Despite a fairly quiet rollout, a new feature on Google’s search engine is unlikely to make it easier for people to know if they should go out or open a can space ball “Perry Air.”
Last year, Google started showing local air quality to people, as well as Google users in India, on their Nest Hub and other smart display devices. The feature was expanded this week to include Google Search users in the U.S. and Victoria, Australia, according to a Google spokesperson. Google’s U.S. system aggregates data from AirNow.gov, a government website that uses EPA monitoring data, and PurpleAir, a private air quality monitoring company.
“We continue to explore how to make authoritative information on a range of sustainability and environmental topics easily accessible, and look forward to sharing more in this area soon,” a Google spokesperson told Techcrunch.
Google’s search engine added Earth Day just in time, a holiday largely absorbed by the big polluters in their regular green cleaning campaigns. Like many companies’ so-called environmental campaigns, this new search engine feature could be even hotter.
AirNow relies on state and local monitoring agencies that submit data to EPA. PurpleAir uses its own sensors that individuals have installed in their communities. In some cases, the information can line up as long as both services actually record data in that area. Both systems use the Air Quality Index to monitor the overall health of the air.
For example, an AirNow interaction might show a small subset of data for Washington Heights in New York City or Melrose in the Bronx, but it wouldn’t show any data for Prospect Park in Brooklyn. If neither PurpleAir nor AirNow have data for an area, then Google has nothing to show.
Entire parts of some cities, especially more rural areas, don’t have any air quality-related data from the EPA’s AirNow website. PurpleAir relies on separate air monitoring devices, so while it covers areas that the government doesn’t monitor, it’s also only useful when its devices are connected to a network.
A Google representative could not confirm how it aggregates its AQI data, and there are disparities in air quality in many local communities. A spokesperson did confirm that the company is developing future tools for people to monitor the state of their environment, but could not provide specifics.
We also contacted PurpleAir to ask them if Google is partnering with the company to create this new feature on the search engine, but we have yet to hear back. If any party gets back to us, we will update the story.
Either way, despite the EPA’s support for the use of these data, AQI monitoring has proven not to be a completely accurate method of determining whether air is safe to breathe, as people’s health is not the only consideration. While the AQI threshold, revised every five years, takes into account long-term health data, it also takes into account the impact of regulations on industry, where even small amounts of air pollutants can have harmful effects. The EPA also doesn’t use real-time data during emergencies like wildfires.
ProPublica has previously reported that the EPA excludes industrial carcinogens from its AQI readings, effectively allowing areas of high air pollution around industrial facilities. These areas have been shown to significantly increase the likelihood of health problems such as cancer. Just as an example in Propublica’s map, an area near Wallingford, Connecticut, has a cancer risk 1.5 times that of a local manufacturer of metal products. A Google search for air quality in Wallingford did not yield any results from the search engine’s new system. Using AirNow’s Wallingford air quality system, using all three postcodes in the area, there is either no data available or an AQI of “good”.
If Google wants to help people monitor their air quality in a way that helps them in their day-to-day work, it will take a deeper investment in infrastructure to make that happen.
