Air Quality in Elizabeth, New Jersey — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Elizabeth — with free alerts the moment the air quality turns unhealthy.
Live Elizabeth AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Elizabeth and Linden, Union, Roselle, Hillside.
Elizabeth doesn't have a wildfire season the way California does — its everyday air quality problem is more mundane and more constant: traffic and industry that never really let up. The city is wedged between the New Jersey Turnpike, Routes 1&9, and the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, and Union County tied for the worst year-round fine particle pollution in the entire New York-Newark metro area in the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report. Summer adds a second layer: ground-level ozone cooked up by heat and tailpipe exhaust, which helped give the wider metro area an F grade and a top-15 ranking among the worst ozone regions in the country.
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.
Elizabeth sits between a port and a refinery
The Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal is the largest container port on the East Coast, and it runs right along Elizabeth's eastern edge — ships, drayage trucks, and diesel cargo equipment operating close to homes in the Elizabethport neighborhood every day. Advocacy groups like Pacific Environment count Elizabeth alongside Newark's Ironbound and South Ward as a frontline community that breathes toxic emissions every day from ships, trucks and port equipment, and push for shore power so ships can plug in instead of idling their diesel engines at berth.
A few blocks past the city's southwestern border in Linden sits the Bayway Refinery, a roughly 1,300-acre Phillips 66 facility that has been refining crude oil since 1909 and now processes about 230,000 barrels a day. Between the refinery, the port, and the Turnpike and Routes 1&9 corridor that 1950s highway construction cut straight through Elizabeth's neighborhoods, the city's industrial geography is less about weather and more about what's parked, idling, or flaring nearby.
Union County's soot problem, by the numbers
The American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report tied Union County with Mercer County for the worst year-round fine particle pollution of any county in the New York-Newark metro area — a region that itself ranked 12th worst in the nation for ozone smog, with an F grade and a worsening trend. Statewide, the same report counted more than 706,882 New Jersey children breathing unhealthy air.
That combination — diesel soot that lingers close to the ground and ozone that builds on hot, sunny afternoons — is why Elizabeth's air can look unremarkable on a calm winter morning and still add up to a bad annual average. Fine particles from trucks and marine equipment don't need a heat wave to matter; they're a year-round baseline that a single citywide number can hide, which is why Canairy reads sensors near the port and highway corridors specifically rather than one faraway monitor.
The one real smoke event Elizabeth still talks about
On June 6–8, 2023, smoke from roughly 160 wildfires burning in Quebec and eastern Ontario rode a stalled weather system south and turned the sky over Elizabeth and the rest of New Jersey a hazy orange. NJ.com reported the state's air quality index hit hazardous, the worst possible rating, and smashed the record for the worst air quality day in 43 years of record-keeping. State health officials issued advisories telling residents statewide to stay indoors as PM2.5 levels spiked far above anything the region normally sees.
It was a genuine outlier, not a preview of a new annual season — Elizabeth doesn't sit anywhere near fire country, and Canadian smoke reaching this deep into the Northeast is rare enough that most residents had never seen anything like it. But it's a real reminder that the air here can turn quickly for reasons that have nothing to do with the port or the refinery, which is exactly the kind of day a live sensor reading catches before the haze is obvious outside.
Elizabeth air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Elizabeth right now?
This page shows the current AQI for Elizabeth, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the city and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood, including near the port and Routes 1&9.
Why does Elizabeth have worse air than nearby suburbs?
Elizabeth sits next to the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, the Bayway Refinery just over the border in Linden, and the New Jersey Turnpike and Routes 1&9 corridor, all of which add diesel and industrial particulate pollution that quieter suburbs don't have. Union County tied for the worst year-round fine particle pollution in the entire New York-Newark metro area in the American Lung Association's 2026 report.
Did the 2023 Canadian wildfires affect Elizabeth's air quality?
Yes. On June 6-8, 2023, smoke from wildfires in Quebec and Ontario pushed New Jersey's statewide air quality index to hazardous levels, the worst reading in 43 years of record-keeping, and turned the sky over Elizabeth orange. It was a rare event rather than a seasonal pattern, but it showed how quickly conditions can change here.
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 Elizabeth data come from?
Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Elizabeth and surrounding Union County towns, 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.