Air Quality in Huntington, West Virginia — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Huntington — with plain-English alerts when fine particle pollution spikes, not just when ozone does.
AQI 17 from 2 PurpleAir sensors · Trending down · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Huntington, West Virginia is AQI 17 — Good and falling — with PM2.5 at 3.1 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors reading 15 to 19. 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 Huntington: 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 Huntington and Barboursville, Milton, Ceredo, Kenova. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Huntington
The sensors Canairy reads in Huntington agree right now — all 2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 0.8 mi SE | 15 | Good |
| 7.1 mi W | 19 | Good |
Huntington's air quality report card looks almost backwards from what people expect: ozone here is about as clean as it gets — the Charleston-Huntington-Ashland metro area earned an A grade with zero unhealthy ozone days in the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report. The real issue is fine particle pollution, which pulled a D grade for short-term spikes in that same report, in a river valley lined with heavy industry from Special Metals' foundry to the Marathon refinery just across the Kentucky line in Catlettsburg.
What Canairy does for Huntington
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Not just a number — a plain-English call for Huntington: open the windows, or keep them shut.
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Huntington's ozone air is some of the cleanest in the country
Huntington sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Guyandotte rivers, on a flood plain about 564 feet above sea level with hills rising close by to the south and southeast. It's the kind of setting that could easily cook up summer smog, but it doesn't: the Charleston-Huntington-Ashland, WV-OH-KY metro area earned an A grade for ozone and recorded zero unhealthy ozone days in the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report — the same clean result as the year before.
That's a genuinely good outcome, and it means most days in Huntington really are fine for a run along the Ohio River levee or a ride out to Ritter Park. Ground-level ozone forms in strong summer sun and heat, and this stretch of the Ohio Valley simply doesn't build it up the way flatter, hotter, more car-choked metros do.
The real problem is fine particles, not smog
The number that should get more attention is particle pollution, not ozone. The same 2026 State of the Air report gave the Charleston-Huntington-Ashland metro a D grade for short-term, 24-hour particle spikes — 2.3 unhealthy days a year on average, a figure unchanged from the year before and bad enough to rank 82nd worst among US metro areas. The year-round average grade passed, but the metro still ranked 114th worst nationally on that measure too.
American Lung Association advocacy director Elizabeth Hensil put it plainly in the report: too many people in the Charleston-Huntington-Ashland metro area are living with unhealthy levels of particle pollution. Fine particles behave differently than ozone — they build up on cold, still days rather than hot ones, and a river valley with hills close on two sides gives them fewer places to go before someone breathes them in.
Two riverbanks of heavy industry, plus a refinery next door
Part of the answer is what lines the riverbanks. Heavy industrial plants sit along both the Ohio and the Guyandotte rivers in Huntington, including Special Metals Corporation's high-nickel alloy plant along with steel fabrication and welding operations, and CSX still moves coal out of the southern coalfields through the city by rail and barge via the Port of Huntington.
Just across the state line, Marathon Petroleum's Catlettsburg refinery — one of the larger refineries in Marathon's network, processing upward of 277,000 barrels of crude a day — sits about two miles off the Ohio River near Ashland, Kentucky, close enough that local TV stations have reported flaring incidents there sending visible smoke plumes over the tri-state area. It isn't in West Virginia, but the air doesn't check state lines any more than smoke does.
Huntington air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Huntington right now?
As of September 14, 2026 at 8:10 AM EDT, the air quality in Huntington, West Virginia is AQI 17 — Good — with PM2.5 at 3.1 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why does Huntington get a failing grade for particle pollution if the air usually looks fine?
The American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report gave the Charleston-Huntington-Ashland metro area a D grade for short-term particle pollution - 2.3 unhealthy days a year - even though the same report gave the region an A for ozone with zero unhealthy days. Fine particles spike on specific days, often when the air is cold and still, rather than building up steadily, which is why the sky can look clear while the AQI is quietly climbing.
Does the Marathon refinery in Catlettsburg affect Huntington's air?
Marathon Petroleum's Catlettsburg refinery sits just across the Ohio River near Ashland, Kentucky, and is one of the larger refineries in its network. Local TV stations have reported flaring incidents there that sent visible smoke over the tri-state area, and prevailing winds can carry that plume toward Huntington. Canairy's sensor map lets you check whether a given day's readings are actually elevated rather than guessing from what you can see out the window.
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 Huntington, 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 Huntington
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