Air Quality in Dallas, Texas — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Dallas — with free alerts the moment the air turns.

Live Dallas AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Dallas and Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Richardson.

Dallas has been out of compliance with the federal ozone standard for a long time, and it keeps getting harder rather than easier. In June 2024 the EPA granted a request from the Governor of Texas to voluntarily reclassify the Dallas-Fort Worth area from Moderate to Serious for the 2015 ozone standard, effective 22 July 2024. A voluntary downgrade sounds odd until you understand what it buys: a worse label in exchange for more time and tighter required controls. The North Central Texas Council of Governments tracks the region's ozone design value through each season — it opened 2026 at 74 parts per billion and stood at 82 ppb on 27 July 2026, with the highest reading that season recorded at Frisco.

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.

The worst ozone is usually north of you, not downtown

This surprises people who assume the freeway interchanges downtown must be the worst place to breathe. Ozone is not emitted from a tailpipe — it is made in the air when exhaust and vapours react in sunlight, and that takes hours. On a hot summer afternoon with a southerly wind, the ingredients leave the urban core and the ozone shows up downwind, which is why the region's peak monitor readings land out in the northern suburbs rather than at Dealey Plaza. Frisco held the highest reading in the 2026 season through late July.

For anyone living in Dallas proper, the practical version is this: your worst air is usually a hot, sunny, low-wind afternoon between roughly May and September, and the number peaks in the late afternoon rather than at rush hour. Morning runs are almost always better than evening ones in ozone season, which is the opposite of the instinct most people have about traffic.

Southern Dallas has carried more of the industrial load

Shingle Mountain is the case everyone in the city knows. Blue Star Recycling started operating in 2018 on land zoned industrial right beside homes in Floral Farms, in southeast Dallas, and the pile of roofing debris grew to 70,000 tons before it was hauled away. Getting the land use changed took another six years. On 12 February 2025 the Dallas City Council voted to rezone the site from mostly industrial to more agricultural uses, with District 12's Cara Mendelsohn the only member voting against — a change residents had argued for on the grounds that it makes a second Shingle Mountain harder to start.

The wider pattern that fight was about — heavy industrial zoning sitting directly against houses in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods — has not been rezoned away, and concrete batch plants and similar operations are still the day-to-day particulate sources in parts of southern Dallas. This is exactly the kind of local, block-level pollution a regional forecast cannot see. A sensor two streets from a plant tells you something the citywide AQI never will.

Dallas said no to drilling. The wells are just west

In December 2013 the Dallas City Council voted 9–6 to require a 1,500-foot setback between new gas rigs or compressor stations and protected uses like homes, businesses and churches. The previous buffer was 300 feet, so the new rule was five times as wide. Council member Lee Kleinman put the practical effect plainly during the debate: "We might as well save a lot of paper and write a one-line ordinance, saying that there will be no gas drilling in the city of Dallas." Whether it was a ban on paper or in effect, very little drilling has happened inside the city since.

That is a genuine difference between Dallas and its neighbours to the west. The Barnett Shale stretches from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex west and south across about 5,000 square miles, and the thick of the drilling — and the compressor stations, tank batteries and gathering lines that come with it — sits in Tarrant County and beyond, not under Dallas. What reaches Dallas from that direction is ozone precursors carried on the wind, not a wellhead down the block.

Dallas air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Dallas today?

In North Texas, the thing that most often looks like smoke is dust. On 4 March 2025 a haboob out of West Texas was carried east by strong winds and turned the sky over the metroplex orange around two in the afternoon — clearly visible from downtown Dallas, downtown Fort Worth and DFW International Airport. Dust hazes the whole sky and comes with wind; smoke usually has a direction and a smell. If the sensors on this page are showing a sharp PM2.5 spike with high winds and no fire nearby, dust is the likely answer, and the advice is the same either way: close the windows and put off the outdoor workout.

What is the air quality in Dallas right now?

This page shows the live AQI for Dallas, calculated from PurpleAir sensors around the city and updated continuously. Dallas is large and its pollution is uneven — a block near a batch plant in the southern half of the city reads differently from a street in Lakewood on the same afternoon — so it is worth saving the specific addresses you care about rather than relying on one citywide number.

Why does Dallas ozone peak in the suburbs instead of downtown?

Because ozone has to be made before it can be measured. Exhaust and solvent vapours are not ozone; they become ozone over several hours of reacting in sunlight, by which time a southerly summer wind has carried them out of the urban core. That is why the highest monitor readings in the region land north of Dallas — Frisco recorded the season's highest through late July 2026 — while downtown, with all its traffic, often reads lower on the same day.

Are there gas wells in Dallas?

Effectively no, and that was a deliberate decision. In December 2013 the city council voted 9–6 to widen the required setback between new gas rigs or compressor stations and homes, businesses and churches from 300 feet to 1,500 feet. Industry called it a de facto ban and there has been very little drilling inside the city since. The Barnett Shale itself runs from the metroplex west and south across roughly 5,000 square miles, so the active wells are mostly in Tarrant County and further out.

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.

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.