Air Quality in Providence, Rhode Island — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Providence — with free alerts the moment smoke drifts in.
AQI 26 from 3 PurpleAir sensors · Trending down · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Providence, Rhode Island is AQI 26 — Good and falling — with PM2.5 at 4.6 µg/m³, the median of 3 live PurpleAir sensors reading 13 to 31. 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 Providence: 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 Providence and Cranston, Pawtucket, East Providence, Warwick. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Providence
The sensors Canairy reads in Providence agree right now — all 3 sit in the Good band, a 18-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1.5 mi S | 31 | Good |
| 2.4 mi S | 13 | Good |
| 3.0 mi SSE | 26 | Good |
A lot of Providence's air trouble arrives on the wind. On hot summer days ground-level ozone builds up over the city as traffic and industrial emissions cook in the sunlight, and Rhode Island sits at the downwind end of the Northeast's pollution corridor. Wildfire smoke from Canada has reached the city too, and an industrial waterfront and Interstate 95 add pollution closer to home.
What Canairy does for Providence
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Providence: 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 Providence or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Providence is doing next
| When | AQI | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 35 | Good | ozone |
| Tomorrow | 33 | Good | PM2.5 |
| Monday | 34 | Good | ozone |
| Tuesday | 33 | Good | PM2.5 |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Providence reporting area. Canairy watches the live sensors against it and tells you when the air actually crosses your threshold, rather than leaving you to check.
Providence sits at the downwind end of the Northeast's ozone corridor
Ground-level ozone is a summer problem in Rhode Island. It forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds react in heat and strong sunlight, and the state's own environmental agency points to automobile and industrial emissions as the primary sources of those ingredients. On a hot, still July afternoon in Providence, the air can carry more ozone than it does during a whole gray week in winter.
Rhode Island does not make all of that pollution itself. The state is one of thirteen in the Ozone Transport Region, a group set up under the Clean Air Act precisely because ozone and its precursors drift downwind across the crowded Northeast corridor. The good news is that Providence's local air has improved enough that the county is no longer classified as failing the federal ozone standard, but summer ozone remains a regional problem that partly blows in from upwind.
An industrial waterfront and a highway that cuts through the city
Providence grew up as a port at the head of Narragansett Bay, and its southern waterfront still runs on heavy industry. The area around the Port of Providence holds oil tanks, power plants and working docks, and it sits right next to residential South Providence and Washington Park. Interstate 95 also slices straight through the middle of the city, so a lot of Providence homes and schools are close to either a highway or the industrial waterfront.
Traffic and industry are the same sources that drive ozone, and they also put fine particles into the air people breathe day to day. That matters here more than in a lot of places: Rhode Island adults have carried a higher rate of asthma than the country as a whole, so cleaner air near home is not an abstract concern. Watching the sensor closest to your street tells you more about your own exposure than a single citywide number ever will.
Wildfire smoke reaches Rhode Island too
Providence is a long way from any forest fire, but smoke does not respect distance. In June 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires spread across the Northeast and into New England, turning skies hazy and prompting air quality alerts across the region. The fine-particle pollution that rides in with wildfire smoke is not something the state can regulate away. It arrives on the wind and can settle over the city for days.
Smoke events are unpredictable, and they can push the AQI from good to unhealthy in a matter of hours. That is exactly the kind of fast change worth knowing about before you send the kids outside or head out for a run, and it is the reason a lot of Rhode Islanders started paying closer attention to air quality in the first place.
Providence air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Providence right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 8:10 AM EDT, the air quality in Providence, Rhode Island is AQI 26 — Good — with PM2.5 at 4.6 µg/m³, the median of 3 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why does Providence's air get worse on hot summer days?
Summer heat and sunlight are what turn traffic and industrial emissions into ground-level ozone, so the hottest, stillest days of the year often bring the worst readings. Rhode Island also sits at the downwind end of the Northeast, so ozone and the pollutants that form it can drift in from upwind states on top of what the city produces itself. That combination is why a bright, hot afternoon can post higher numbers than a cloudy day.
Does living near the Port of Providence or Interstate 95 affect the air?
Providence's southern waterfront runs on heavy industry, with oil tanks, power plants and docks sitting close to residential South Providence and Washington Park, and Interstate 95 cuts straight through the city. Traffic and industry are the main local sources of the pollutants behind ozone and fine particles, so readings can vary noticeably from one part of the city to another. Checking the sensor nearest your home gives you a truer picture of your own air than a single citywide figure.
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 3 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Providence, 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 Providence
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