Air Quality in Henderson, Nevada — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Henderson — with free alerts the moment the air turns.
AQI 2 from 2 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Henderson, Nevada is AQI 2 — Good and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 0.3 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors reading 0 to 3. 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 Henderson: weeds 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 Henderson and Green Valley, Anthem, Boulder City, Paradise, Whitney, Las Vegas. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Henderson
The sensors Canairy reads in Henderson agree right now — all 2 sit in the Good band, a 3-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 5.1 mi W | 3 | Good |
| 7.4 mi SSW | 0 | Good |
Henderson shares the Las Vegas Valley's air, and it shares its regulatory status: the whole valley is tracked as Hydrographic Area 212, which was reclassified as a Serious nonattainment area for the 2015 ozone standard effective 21 January 2025 and has until 3 August 2027 to meet it. But Henderson also has something the rest of the valley does not. The Black Mountain Industrial Complex — a chemical manufacturing site in operation since 1942 — sits in unincorporated Clark County completely surrounded by the City of Henderson, and eight decades of heavy industry there have left a record that residents still remember by name.
What Canairy does for Henderson
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Henderson: 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 Henderson or across the country, on one screen.
The BMI complex and what came out of it
On 4 May 1988 a welding torch ignited a structure at PEPCON holding roughly 4,500 tons of ammonium perchlorate, the oxidiser used in rocket fuel. The explosions killed two people, caused about $74 million in property damage and destroyed the neighbouring Kidd Marshmallow plant; the site is a corporate park now. Three years later, at around one in the morning on 6 May 1991, a 150-ton storage tank at Pioneer Chlor Alkali leaked chlorine gas. The liquid chlorine expanded to 460 times its original volume and formed a large green cloud over the southeast valley, and more than 200 people were treated at hospitals. That plant still runs, as Olin Chlor Alkali, making bleach and hydrochloric acid.
The titanium plant has its own file. Between 1992 and 1998 TIMET emitted up to 360 tons of sulfur dioxide a year, and in 1999 it paid $430,000 for Clean Air Act violations. It has also been penalised over chlorine leaks in 1996 and 2012, in both cases for failing to notify authorities immediately. None of this is a description of the air today — it is the reason a lot of Henderson residents want to see a number rather than take anyone's word for it.
What the cleanup found, and what it didn't
The Nevada Environmental Response Trust was established in February 2011 to deal with the contamination left underneath the complex. Its main target is perchlorate, first detected in the Lower Colorado River in 1997 and traced back to groundwater beneath the former production sites; NERT removed 236,900 pounds of it in 2022 alone, out of more than 12.6 million pounds removed since detection. Hexavalent chromium was addressed by a treatment system installed back in the 1980s.
The question closest to home for residents was air, not groundwater. After the EPA recommended indoor air testing in September 2020, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection directed NERT to sample indoor air in the Pittman neighbourhood for chloroform vapour. That sampling ran from March to May 2022 and the results, released in August 2022, concluded there is no unacceptable human health risk from vapour intrusion, with no health concerns for chloroform in the surrounding communities. It is a genuinely reassuring finding, and worth knowing about if you have heard the older version of the story.
The everyday stuff: ozone, dust and smoke from elsewhere
Day to day, Henderson's air behaves like the rest of the valley's. Ozone is the summer problem, forming when exhaust and vapours react in strong sunlight, and Clark County now issues a seasonal ozone and wildfire smoke advisory covering 1 April through 30 September — 2026 was the fourth consecutive year. Ground-level ozone exceeded EPA health standards on 18 days in the most recent year, down from 25 the year before.
Dust is the spring problem. Clark County issues a dust advisory when sustained winds of 25 mph with gusts of 40 mph or more are expected, and advises keeping windows and doors closed, running air conditioning to filter particles, and limiting outdoor activity while it blows. And smoke arrives from a long way off: in August 2025 the Gifford Fire near Santa Barbara pushed heavy smoke across the valley on southwest winds, and Clark County urged children, older residents and people with respiratory or heart conditions to stay indoors for several days.
Henderson air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Henderson right now?
As of September 10, 2026 at 6:10 AM MDT, the air quality in Henderson, Nevada is AQI 2 — Good — with PM2.5 at 0.3 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why is there smoke in Henderson today?
Most often a wildfire in California, carried east on southwest winds. In August 2025 the Gifford Fire burning north of Santa Barbara put heavy smoke over the Las Vegas Valley and Clark County advised children, older residents and people with respiratory or heart conditions to stay indoors through the rest of the week, limit outdoor exercise and keep windows and doors closed. Clark County now issues a seasonal wildfire smoke and ozone advisory running 1 April to 30 September, and 2026 was the fourth year in a row it has done so.
Is the air in Henderson affected by the old chemical plants?
The industrial history is real and well documented: the PEPCON explosion in May 1988, the Pioneer Chlor Alkali chlorine release in May 1991 that sent more than 200 people to hospital, and TIMET emitting up to 360 tons of sulfur dioxide a year between 1992 and 1998. On the question of whether contamination is reaching indoor air now, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection had homes in the Pittman neighbourhood sampled for chloroform vapour between March and May 2022, and the results released that August found no unacceptable human health risk from vapour intrusion. Groundwater remediation for perchlorate is still active and ongoing.
Does Henderson have the same ozone problem as Las Vegas?
Yes — it is the same air basin and the same federal designation. Henderson sits inside Hydrographic Area 212, the Las Vegas Valley, which was reclassified as a Serious nonattainment area for the 2015 ozone standard effective 21 January 2025, with an attainment deadline of 3 August 2027. Ozone peaks on hot summer afternoons rather than cold mornings, because sunlight and heat are what drive the reaction that creates it.
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 2 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Henderson, 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 Henderson
We watch Henderson's air. You live your life.
Set your threshold once and get a heads-up only when the air actually changes for you. Free on the App Store & Google Play.