Air Quality in Cranston, Rhode Island — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Cranston — with free alerts when summer ozone or wildfire smoke pushes the air into unhealthy territory.
AQI 5 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Trending down · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Cranston, Rhode Island is AQI 5 — Good and falling — with PM2.5 at 0.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 1 to 5. Canairy's verdict: Breathe easy.
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 Cranston: grass pollen is the strongest of the three at a 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 Cranston and Providence, Warwick, Johnston, West Warwick. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Cranston
The sensors Canairy reads in Cranston agree right now — all 4 sit in the Good band, a 4-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 2.7 mi NE | 1 | Good |
| 3.5 mi NNE | 5 | Good |
| 3.7 mi ENE | 3 | Good |
| 4.4 mi S | 5 | Good |
Cranston's air is good most of the year. The city is flat and close to Narragansett Bay, with no valley or basin to trap pollution the way parts of California do. The two things that actually push Cranston's air into unhealthy territory are both bigger than the city itself: hot, hazy summer afternoons when ground-level ozone builds up across southern New England, and wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada, which reached Rhode Island twice in 2023.
What Canairy does for Cranston
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Cranston: 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 Cranston or across the country, on one screen.
Cranston's ozone problem starts somewhere else
Rhode Island's entire Providence-Warwick area, Cranston included, is classified nonattainment for ground-level ozone under the EPA's 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion. That's less a Cranston pollution story than a geography one: the state sits at the tail end of the Northeast's I-95 corridor, and a lot of the nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds that cook into ozone on hot, sunny days were emitted upwind in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey before the wind ever carries them here. Cranston adds its own share too — I-95, I-295, Route 10, and Route 37 all cross the city, so idling summer traffic is adding fresh precursor pollution right where people live.
The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management issues a daily air quality forecast that includes recess guidance for schools on days when ozone is expected to climb, because the sunniest, calmest, hottest summer afternoons are exactly when ozone peaks — typically in the mid-afternoon hours after traffic and heat have had all day to build it up. Those are the days it's worth moving a run or a kid's outdoor practice earlier or later, since ozone irritates the lungs most during hard breathing.
Canadian wildfire smoke reached Cranston twice in 2023
Rhode Island didn't really have a wildfire smoke season until 2023, when Canada's worst fire year on record changed that. On May 30, 2023, the state Department of Environmental Management issued a statewide air quality alert as smoke from wildfires burning in Nova Scotia pushed fine-particle readings into unhealthy territory. A month later it happened again: an alert issued June 30 warned that smoke from wildfires burning farther north in Canada would keep Rhode Island's air unhealthy for fine particles through Saturday, July 1, with light winds giving the smoke nowhere to go.
Both alerts covered the whole state, Cranston included, and both carried the same warning: the fine particles in wildfire smoke are small enough to get past the body's natural defenses and settle deep in the lungs, so anyone with asthma or heart disease should watch closely and everyone else should limit strenuous time outdoors. Cranston can look perfectly clear at street level while the PM2.5 reading tells a very different story — exactly the kind of day a sensor catches and a glance out the window misses.
The smell some Cranston residents know well
Just over the line in neighboring Johnston sits the Central Landfill, a 154-acre site that has taken in roughly 90 percent of Rhode Island's municipal solid waste since 1981 and has been on the EPA's Superfund National Priorities List since 1986. It's operated by the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, and when its gas-collection system falls behind, the smell travels: residents on Cranston's western side, closest to the Johnston line, have reported stretches of stronger-than-normal odor from the landfill, and the state has confirmed the source.
The odor problem has a paper trail. The landfill's operators settled with the town of Johnston for $5 million over odor complaints in 2015, then settled a Conservation Law Foundation lawsuit the following year by agreeing to add emissions and air quality monitoring and improve gas collection. The EPA later issued the operator a Notice of Violation for failing to meet Clean Air Act permit and reporting requirements, and CLF has pursued further legal action since. It's a gas and odor issue rather than a PM2.5 spike, so it may not always move the AQI number even on a day it's very noticeable outside — but it's the air complaint Cranston residents are most likely to recognize by name.
Cranston air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Cranston right now?
As of September 14, 2026 at 5:42 PM EDT, the air quality in Cranston, Rhode Island is AQI 5 — Good — with PM2.5 at 0.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why does Cranston get ozone alerts in summer?
Rhode Island's Providence-Warwick area, including Cranston, is classified nonattainment for ground-level ozone under the EPA's 2015 standard. Much of that ozone forms from pollution carried up the Northeast's I-95 corridor from Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, then cooks in the heat and sun of a still summer afternoon. Cranston's own stretch of I-95, I-295, Route 10, and Route 37 adds to it locally, which is why ozone tends to peak on the hottest, sunniest, calmest days.
What's that smell in Cranston sometimes?
Residents on Cranston's western side, near the Johnston line, sometimes notice a strong odor from the Central Landfill just over the border in Johnston. The state has confirmed the source, and the site has a history of Clean Air Act violations and legal settlements over it. It's an odor and gas issue rather than a spike in PM2.5, so it may not always show up as a change in the AQI number even when it's very noticeable outside.
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 Cranston, 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
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Air quality near Cranston
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