Air Quality in North Charleston, South Carolina — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across North Charleston — including the Neck's industrial corridor — with free alerts when the air changes.

Live North Charleston AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering North Charleston and Charleston, Hanahan, Goose Creek, Summerville.

For most of North Charleston, air quality is unremarkable in the best way — this is coastal Lowcountry, not a smoke-prone canyon or a smog-choked basin. But drive into the Neck, the industrial corridor squeezed between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers where Rosemont, Union Heights, and Chicora-Cherokee sit beside a working chemical plant, the port, and the rail lines that feed it, and the story changes. Those neighborhoods have spent decades living next to industry that occasionally spills into the air they breathe.

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 Neck's chemical plant has a long, documented history

The Lanxess plant on King Street Extension, right next to Rosemont, has a history residents haven't been allowed to forget. On June 17, 1991, an explosion at the site — then owned by Albright & Wilson — killed nine workers and injured dozens. The plant has kept having incidents since: a 2019 phosphorous leak forced a shelter-in-place order and briefly shut down I-26, and in 2023 two more leaks followed, including a roughly 10-pound phosphorus release on June 21 that sent the surrounding blocks back indoors.

During that June 2023 release, a light wind carried the plume over Rosemont for about two hours, and one of the neighborhood's own PurpleAir monitors read an AQI of 167 — Unhealthy — before it cleared. Nancy Button, president of the Rosemont Neighborhood Council and a 70-year resident, has pushed the state's environmental agency and the company for years to spell out exactly what residents are being exposed to. The plant has since cut its ethylene oxide emissions by roughly 80% since 2019 under new federal controls, but Rosemont keeps watching.

Port traffic, rail yards, and I-26 add diesel to the same corridor

Rosemont's other neighbor is the South Carolina Ports Authority terminal — the reason the state's transportation department built a 1,500-foot sound barrier along an alternate I-26 route rather than send an off-ramp straight through the neighborhood. That same few square miles carries the container trucks, Norfolk Southern and CSX rail traffic, and interstate exhaust that come with a major East Coast port, stacked on top of whatever the chemical plant is putting out.

It's that combination — industry, rail, and diesel truck traffic concentrated in one place — that led the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities and the Medical University of South Carolina's Department of Public Health Sciences to build a community air-monitoring network, placing PurpleAir sensors specifically in Rosemont, Union Heights, Accabee, Liberty Hill, and Chicora-Cherokee. Canairy reads that same kind of sensor data, block by block, rather than leaning on a single number for a city that covers 81 square miles.

One number can't describe a city this spread out

North Charleston runs from the industrial Neck near downtown Charleston all the way up to Ashley Phosphate Road and the Boeing plant and airport near the Dorchester County line — neighborhoods that have nothing to do with the chemical corridor and, most days, breathe genuinely clean coastal air off the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.

That's why a single citywide AQI reading is close to meaningless here: a family near the port and the Lanxess plant can be watching very different air than a family off Ashley Phosphate Road ten miles north. Canairy pulls from the sensors nearest the places you've actually saved, not one monitor standing in for the whole city.

North Charleston air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in North Charleston right now?

This page shows the current AQI for North Charleston, 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 the sensors placed in Rosemont and the Neck.

Why does the Neck neighborhood near Rosemont see worse air quality spikes?

Rosemont and neighboring Union Heights and Chicora-Cherokee sit next to both a working chemical plant and the South Carolina Ports Authority terminal, with the truck, rail, and highway traffic that comes with a major port stacked on top. A 2023 phosphorus release from the plant pushed a nearby PurpleAir sensor to an AQI of 167 before it cleared, and residents have pressed the state's environmental agency for years to explain what they're breathing.

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 North Charleston data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across North Charleston and surrounding 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.