Air Quality in New Orleans, Louisiana — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across New Orleans — with plain-English alerts when the air along the river changes.
Live New Orleans AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering New Orleans and Metairie, Kenner, Chalmette, Slidell.
New Orleans doesn't have a wildfire smoke season the way California does — most days the air here is genuinely fine, with PM2.5 readings that meet World Health Organization guidelines and a Gulf breeze that generally clears out what does build up. The city's real air-quality story runs along the Mississippi River: New Orleans sits at the downriver end of Louisiana's petrochemical corridor, next door to one of the region's biggest refineries, and along a stretch of port and industrial traffic that can occasionally turn a calm week into a smoky one.
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.
New Orleans sits at the end of "Cancer Alley"
The stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is home to more than 350 petrochemical plants and refineries — the densest concentration in the Western Hemisphere — and locals and environmental groups have called it Cancer Alley for decades. Facilities like the Shell/Valero complex in Norco and the Denka neoprene plant in nearby LaPlace sit in the same river corridor that feeds directly into New Orleans's air, especially when the wind comes out of the west or northwest.
That corridor isn't hypothetical for New Orleans neighborhoods. When Hurricane Ida tore through St. Charles Parish in August 2021, it left the oil refineries and chemical plants around Norco flaring off gas for days as they shut down and restarted — a pattern that repeats to some degree with nearly every hurricane that threatens the river parishes. It's one reason a single citywide AQI number matters less here than knowing what a sensor near your own neighborhood is actually reading.
The Chalmette refinery is close enough to shake the city
Unlike the plants further upriver, the Chalmette Refining complex sits right at New Orleans's eastern edge in St. Bernard Parish, within a few miles of the Lower Ninth Ward and Arabi. On May 8, 2026, a fire broke out in a unit called Retreater No. 1 — where the refinery removes impurities from crude oil — after it lost containment and the released liquid hydrocarbons ignited. The blast reportedly shook homes miles away, and the fire burned for a few hours before nitrogen purging extinguished it.
The refinery reported releasing about 13.3 tons of pollutants that day, including more than 27,000 pounds of nickel-based catalyst material. The watchdog group Louisiana Bucket Brigade argued the company's own air testing didn't account for likely dust from the damaged catalyst, and noted the plant has had multiple incidents since 2023. It's the kind of event that doesn't show up in a seasonal forecast — it shows up as a sudden spike on the sensors nearest the East Bank, which is exactly what Canairy is built to catch.
Why New Orleans's worst air days tend to be short ones
New Orleans is flat and sits below sea level across much of its footprint, wedged between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain — there are no valley walls or mountains here to trap pollution overnight the way an inversion does in a place like Napa. Most of the year, onshore breezes off the Gulf keep the air moving; monitoring data compiled by IQAir puts the city's PM2.5 at around 9 micrograms per cubic meter in recent years, comfortably inside WHO guidelines, with April and October tending to run a little higher than the rest of the year.
The Port of New Orleans adds its own steady background: it's the sixth-busiest cruise port in the country and a major cargo and rail hub, and ships burning heavy fuel oil add sulfur dioxide to the mix along the river. None of that usually pushes the city into unhealthy territory on its own — but stack a slow-moving summer heat dome, port and highway traffic, and an upriver refinery event on the same still day, and the number can move more than people expect for a place with no wildfire season at all.
New Orleans air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in New Orleans right now?
This page shows the current AQI for New Orleans, 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.
Why does New Orleans's air quality sometimes spike without a wildfire nearby?
New Orleans has essentially no wildfire season. Its short-lived bad-air days usually trace back to the petrochemical corridor upriver, a flaring event during hurricane season when refineries shut down and restart, or an industrial incident like the May 2026 Chalmette refinery fire. A still, humid day can let any of those linger longer than a breezy one would.
Does the Chalmette refinery affect New Orleans's air quality?
It can. The Chalmette Refining complex sits in St. Bernard Parish at the city's eastern edge, close enough that a May 2026 fire in one of its units reportedly shook homes miles away and released roughly 13.3 tons of pollutants, including catalyst dust. Canairy's sensors near the East Bank and Lower Ninth Ward are the fastest way to see whether a day like that is affecting the air where you are.
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 New Orleans data come from?
Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across New Orleans and surrounding towns like Metairie and Chalmette, 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.