Air Quality in Cleveland, Ohio — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Cleveland — with free alerts the moment smoke drifts in.
AQI 54 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Trending up · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Cleveland, Ohio is AQI 54 — Moderate and rising — with PM2.5 at 10.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 36 to 66. Canairy's verdict: Mostly clear.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is below the World Health Organization's 24-hour guideline of 15 µg/m³. The WHO figure is a daily average and this is a live reading, so read it as a sense of magnitude rather than a formal exceedance — a brief spike and a bad day are not the same thing. More on the WHO guidelines
Pollen today in Cleveland: grass pollen is the strongest of the three at a very low level, from Google's pollen forecast. Canairy shows the tree, grass and weed forecast beside the air reading on every plan, including the free one.
Free to download · Live data from PurpleAir & public monitors
Live PurpleAir sensor map for Cleveland and Lakewood, Parma, Euclid, Shaker Heights. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Cleveland
The sensors Canairy reads in Cleveland are 30 AQI points apart right now, from Good to Moderate, which is the whole reason one city-wide number can mislead you: the median describes air you may not be standing in.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1 mi ESE | 58 | Moderate |
| 8.7 mi WSW | 66 | Moderate |
| 9.9 mi E | 36 | Good |
| 11.5 mi NE | 50 | Good |
Cleveland's air carries two stories at once. There is the honest legacy of an industrial river valley, where a working steel mill still runs coal-fired blast furnaces in the Steelyards, and there are the newer bad-air days that arrive as smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles north. In June 2023, Canadian wildfire smoke drifted over Lake Erie and pushed the city's air quality index near 285, deep into the very unhealthy range, and haze has returned in the summers since.
What Canairy does for Cleveland
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Cleveland: open the windows, or keep them shut.
Smoke alerts
A push or text the moment the air crosses your threshold — and again when it clears.
A heads-up before it's bad
Trend alerts catch the air turning, so you can close up the house before the smoke settles in.
Every place you care about
Home, work, the kids' school — across Cleveland or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Cleveland is doing next
| When | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|
| Today | Good | ozone |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Cleveland-Akron-Lorain reporting area. Canairy watches the live sensors against it and tells you when the air actually crosses your threshold, rather than leaving you to check.
A working steel mill still sits in the valley
Follow the Cuyahoga River south from downtown and you reach the Steelyards, where the Cleveland Works mill has turned iron ore into steel for more than a century. It is still running today, just south of Tremont, on coal-fired blast furnaces that burn coke around the clock. That makes it the single largest source of carbon dioxide across Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties combined, roughly 47 percent of Cleveland's total emissions.
Carbon dioxide is not the part you breathe, but coal-based steelmaking also releases fine particulate matter and sulfur dioxide into the neighborhoods along the valley. One analysis tied the plant's pollution to as many as 39 early deaths, more than 1,700 lost work days, and over 9,000 asthma cases in a year. If you live in Tremont, Ohio City, the near West Side, or the Flats, the mill is part of your local air, and the closest sensor will tell you more than a citywide average ever could.
Cleveland ranks among the worst US cities for particle pollution
In its 2025 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association ranked the Cleveland area 9th most polluted in the nation for year-round particle pollution. That was the most dramatic jump in the entire country, up from 54th the year before, and the metro also earned failing grades for both ozone and short-term particle spikes.
Particle pollution is the soot-sized stuff that comes off traffic, freight, industry, and wildfire smoke, and it is small enough to reach deep into the lungs. It is exactly the kind of thing that does not always look like anything from your window, which is why a live reading close to home is worth more than a glance at the sky.
Smoke summers and the lake's own ozone
The 2023 smoke event was not a one-off. Canadian wildfire seasons have sent haze back over Northeast Ohio in the summers since, and because that smoke rides the wind for hundreds of miles, a clear morning in Cleveland can turn hazy by afternoon with no local warning. Those are the days to check a number before you send the kids out or head to the lakefront.
Cleveland also makes some of its own bad air in the warm months. Ground-level ozone forms when sun and heat cook the exhaust from traffic and industry, and it tends to peak on hot, still summer days along the Lake Erie shore. There is genuine good news here too: the EPA has redesignated the Cleveland area to attainment for the 2015 ozone standard, meaning the region now meets that federal limit. Ozone still spikes on the hottest days, so it stays worth watching from roughly late spring through September.
Cleveland air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Cleveland right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 8:10 AM EDT, the air quality in Cleveland, Ohio is AQI 54 — Moderate — with PM2.5 at 10.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside.
Why is Cleveland's air ranked among the worst in the country?
In the 2025 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association ranked the Cleveland area 9th most polluted in the nation for year-round particle pollution, its steepest one-year jump anywhere in the country. The drivers are a mix of heavy industry in the river valley, traffic and freight, and wildfire smoke that drifts in from the north during the summer.
Does the steel mill in the valley affect Cleveland's air?
The Cleveland Works mill in the Steelyards, on the Cuyahoga River just south of Tremont, still runs coal-fired blast furnaces and is the single largest source of carbon dioxide across five surrounding counties combined. Coal-based steelmaking also releases fine particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, so neighborhoods along the valley can see local air that differs from the rest of the city. A sensor near you shows what is actually in the air where you are, rather than a citywide average.
What the AQI numbers mean
| AQI | Category | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 0–50 | Good | Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity. |
| 51–100 | Moderate | Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside. |
| 101–150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Kids, elderly, and respiratory conditions stay closer to home. |
| 151–200 | Unhealthy | Skip outdoor exercise. Close windows. |
| 201–300 | Very Unhealthy | Limit time outside. N95 if you must go. |
| 301+ | Hazardous | Health emergency. Stay inside, run filtration if you have it. |
Canairy lets you tighten these bands if you’re more sensitive than the EPA default, so an alert can fire before the official category changes. How to read the Air Quality Index
Where these readings come from
The AQI at the top of this page is the median of the 4 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Cleveland, with outliers set aside so that one sensor brought indoors — or parked beside a barbecue — cannot set the number for a whole city. Every sensor behind it is listed above with its distance and bearing from the city center. There is no black box here.
In the app, a place you save resolves the same way first. When no neighborhood sensor is reporting it falls back to the nearest EPA AirNow monitor, and anything modeled rather than measured is labelled a regional estimate rather than passed off as a sensor reading. How low-cost sensors compare to regulatory monitors
About Canairy
Canairy is free to download. The free plan covers one saved place with live readings, a plain-English verdict, and push alerts when the air crosses a threshold you choose. Paid plans add more places, faster refreshes, and SMS alerts. It is built by two parents in Sonoma County, California, who got tired of guessing whether it was safe to send the kids outside. Why we built it
Go deeper
Air quality near Cleveland
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