Air Quality in Parkersburg, West Virginia — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Parkersburg — with free alerts the moment ozone climbs.

Live Parkersburg AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Parkersburg and Vienna, Belpre, OH, Marietta, OH, Williamstown.

For most of the year, the air in Parkersburg settles into the good-to-moderate range typical of the Ohio Valley. The exception is summer: hot, humid, stagnant afternoons cook vehicle and industrial exhaust into ground-level ozone, and Wood County spent years on the EPA's ozone nonattainment list because of it. Add a Mid-Ohio Valley chemical industry that residents have watched closely since the Washington Works PFOA story broke, and it's easy to see why people here don't take the air for granted.

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.

Summer ozone, not summer smoke, is Parkersburg's real air problem

Unlike much of the West, Parkersburg's worst air days don't come from wildfire smoke drifting in — they come from the ground up, on hot, still summer afternoons when sunlight bakes vehicle and industrial exhaust into ground-level ozone. The EPA designated the Parkersburg-Marietta area, covering Wood County, West Virginia and Washington County, Ohio, as nonattainment for the 1997 8-hour ozone standard in 2004, a formal acknowledgment that the valley's summer ozone was a real public-health problem, not a nuisance.

The area has since met the federal standard and is now on an EPA-approved maintenance plan that runs through 2027, but the underlying weather pattern hasn't changed. The American Lung Association's State of the Air report still ranks the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna metro around 125th out of 226 U.S. areas for high-ozone days — middling, not clean, and worth checking before a July afternoon outside.

The Washington Works plant shaped how this valley thinks about its air

Just across the Ohio River from Parkersburg, the Washington Works chemical plant has manufactured fluorochemicals since 1951, first under DuPont and now under Chemours. It's the plant at the center of the PFOA (C8) contamination story — the one attorney Robert Bilott spent decades litigating, and the subject of the film Dark Waters. Most of that story is about drinking water, but the same PFAS compounds have also been documented moving through the plant's air emissions and settling on the surrounding land, not just flowing downriver.

In 2025 a federal judge ordered Chemours to stop discharges exceeding its permit limits at Washington Works, an order an appeals court later paused. PFAS isn't part of the EPA's Air Quality Index and Canairy doesn't measure it — our sensors read PM2.5 and ozone, the pollutants the AQI actually covers. But the plant's history is a big reason Mid-Ohio Valley residents pay closer attention to what's coming out of local industry than people in a lot of other places do.

A river-valley climate that turns up the heat, not the smoke

Parkersburg sits at 633 feet elevation, right where the Little Kanawha River meets the Ohio, with Belpre and Marietta, Ohio directly across the water. It isn't the kind of steep mountain hollow that traps cold air in a winter inversion the way some West Virginia towns further into Appalachia are; the terrain here is river-valley rolling hills, not a bowl.

What the valley does deliver is heat and humidity — summer highs regularly near 90°F, a record of 104°F, and the kind of muggy, wind-still air that lets ozone and fine particles build up through a long afternoon instead of blowing through. That combination of heat, humidity, highway traffic, and a river valley full of legacy industry is the real reason to check the number before a summer outdoor plan, not a wildfire forecast.

Parkersburg air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Parkersburg right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Parkersburg, calculated from PurpleAir sensors around the city and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood, whether that's downtown, Vienna, or across the river in Belpre.

Why does Parkersburg get ozone alerts in summer?

Ground-level ozone forms when sunlight bakes vehicle and industrial exhaust on hot, still days, and the Mid-Ohio Valley gets plenty of both. Wood County, West Virginia and Washington County, Ohio spent years on the EPA's ozone nonattainment list before meeting the federal standard, and the area still ranks in the middle of the pack nationally for high-ozone days. Summer afternoons, especially still, humid ones, are when it's worth checking your number before spending hours outside.

Does the Washington Works plant affect Parkersburg's air quality?

Washington Works, across the Ohio River near Parkersburg, is best known for PFOA (C8) contamination of local drinking water, and PFAS compounds have also been documented in air emissions from the site. PFAS isn't part of the EPA's Air Quality Index, though, and Canairy's readings track the pollutants the AQI actually measures - PM2.5 and ozone - not PFAS. The plant's history is a big part of why people in this valley watch their air and water closely.

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 Parkersburg data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Parkersburg 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.