Air Quality in Birmingham, Alabama — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Birmingham — with free alerts when summer ozone climbs into unhealthy territory.

Live Birmingham AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Birmingham and Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Trussville.

Birmingham's air-quality problem isn't wildfire smoke — it's the same summer heat and industrial legacy that built this city in the first place. The American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report gave the Birmingham-Cullman-Talladega metro an F for ozone, ranking it 4th-worst in the Southeast and 46th out of 226 metro areas nationwide, with unhealthy ozone days climbing to six a year after averaging close to one just a few years back. Most days, especially outside the hottest months, the air here is unremarkable. It's the long, humid stretch from May through September — when heat and sunlight cook vehicle exhaust into ozone inside a valley that doesn't clear out easily — that the numbers turn bad.

Canairy watches the sensors around your home, your kids' school, and everywhere else you care about, and tells you in plain English when the air changes enough to matter.

Jones Valley has been trapping this city's air for over a century

Birmingham sits in Jones Valley at about 600 feet, hemmed in by Red Mountain just south of downtown and by parallel Appalachian foothill ridges running northeast to southwest. On hot, still days that terrain limits how much the air over the metro actually mixes and clears, which is exactly what turned deadly in November 1971: a thermal inversion settled over the valley from November 15 through 21 while steel plants ran at full capacity in 80-degree heat, and smog got bad enough that Federal Judge Sam Pointer signed a temporary restraining order on November 19 forcing 23 major industries to cut emissions — one of the first actions of its kind in the country. Truckers had already taken to calling the city 'Smoke City,' and UAB pulmonologist Dr. Ben Branscomb later found that 27% of patients at the Birmingham VA hospital had emphysema.

The visible soot from that era is mostly gone — steel production here is a fraction of what it was — but the same valley geography still holds today's pollution close to the ground. What collects now is largely invisible: ground-level ozone and fine particles from vehicle exhaust and regional industry, not smokestack smoke you can see from downtown.

North Birmingham is still cleaning up a century of industrial pollution

The EPA's 35th Avenue Superfund site covers the North Birmingham neighborhoods of Collegeville, Harriman Park, and Fairmont, which sit next to coke plants including ABC Coke (owned by Drummond Company) and the plant long known as Walter Coke, now ERP Coke. Soil testing that began in 2012 found unhealthy levels of arsenic, lead, and benzo[a]pyrene, a hydrocarbon produced by coking coal, and the EPA has since tested more than 1,200 properties and replaced contaminated soil at many of them. These same neighborhoods were restricted to Black residents under Birmingham's 1926 racial zoning ordinance, and research on that era found such zones were roughly four times more likely than white neighborhoods to sit next to heavy industry.

The soil cleanup hasn't ended the story: as recently as early 2026, residents and environmental groups including GASP were pressing state regulators to tighten ABC Coke's air permit rather than renew it as written. For anyone living near 35th Avenue North, air quality here is less a seasonal event and more a decades-long point-source problem sitting right next to specific streets and homes.

Ozone season runs May through September, and it's getting worse

Ground-level ozone forms when nitrogen oxides — mostly from vehicle exhaust — react with sunlight and heat, so Birmingham's unhealthy ozone days cluster on hot, sunny afternoons between roughly 2 and 7 p.m. from late spring through early fall. Jefferson and Shelby counties spent decades classified by the EPA as a nonattainment area for ozone before finally cleaning up enough to be released from that status, but the American Lung Association's tracking shows the trend reversing: from an average of roughly one unhealthy ozone day in earlier reports, up to five in the 2021-2023 data and six in the most recent 2022-2024 report, with vehicle traffic named as a leading contributor alongside regional industrial sources.

A single number for the whole metro also hides a lot of local variation. North Birmingham, sitting closest to the coke plants, and neighborhoods south of Red Mountain in Vestavia Hills or Hoover can see meaningfully different readings on the same afternoon. That's why Canairy reads the network of PurpleAir sensors spread across Birmingham and its suburbs instead of a single downtown monitor — the number you see comes from sensors near the places you actually saved.

Birmingham air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Birmingham right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Birmingham, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the metro and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood.

Why does Birmingham get bad ozone in the summer?

Ground-level ozone forms when vehicle exhaust reacts with sunlight and heat, and Birmingham's Jones Valley location holds that mix in place on hot, still afternoons from roughly May through September. The American Lung Association's most recent State of the Air report gave the metro an F for ozone, with unhealthy days climbing to six a year and vehicle traffic named as a leading cause.

What is the 35th Avenue Superfund site in North Birmingham?

It's an EPA-designated cleanup area covering the Collegeville, Harriman Park, and Fairmont neighborhoods near coke plants including ABC Coke and the former Walter Coke facility. Soil testing beginning in 2012 found arsenic, lead, and other industrial contaminants, and the EPA has since tested and remediated soil at more than 1,200 properties, though air-permit disputes over the coke plants continue.

What AQI level is unhealthy?

Under the US EPA scale, AQI 0-50 is Good and 51-100 is Moderate. From 101 the air is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups - kids, older adults, and people with asthma or heart conditions - and above 150 it's Unhealthy for everyone. Canairy translates these numbers into a plain-English verdict, like whether to close the windows or move a workout indoors.

Where does Canairy's Birmingham data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Birmingham and nearby communities like Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Trussville, cross-referenced with government monitors and the Google Air Quality API. You can see every sensor behind your numbers on the live map - there's no black box.

Is Canairy free?

Yes. The Canairy app is free to download and includes live air quality for all your saved places, plain-English verdicts, and free push alerts when the air crosses your threshold. A paid plan adds extras like SMS text alerts.

Get Canairy free on Google Play.