Air Quality in Shreveport, Louisiana — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Shreveport — with free alerts when the air changes enough to matter.
AQI 23 from 3 PurpleAir sensors · Trending down · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Shreveport, Louisiana is AQI 23 — Good and falling — with PM2.5 at 4.2 µg/m³, the median of 3 live PurpleAir sensors reading 16 to 38. 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 Shreveport: grass pollen is the strongest of the three at a moderate 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 Shreveport and Bossier City, Blanchard, Benton, Haughton. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Shreveport
The sensors Canairy reads in Shreveport agree right now — all 3 sit in the Good band, a 22-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 4.2 mi E | 23 | Good |
| 5.8 mi ESE | 38 | Good |
| 6.9 mi SE | 16 | Good |
Shreveport sits in the Red River valley in northwest Louisiana, and most days its air is comfortably in the Good range — the same humid subtropical climate that brings frequent rain tends to wash pollutants out of the sky. The exception shows up two ways: on hot, still summer afternoons, when heat and humidity let ozone and fine particles build up into Moderate territory, and on the rarer occasions when trouble flares at the oil refinery that sits inside the city itself, just across Interstate 20 from the Louisiana State Fairgrounds.
What Canairy does for Shreveport
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Shreveport: open the windows, or keep them shut.
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A heads-up before it's bad
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What the air in Shreveport is doing next
| When | AQI | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 44 | Good | PM2.5 |
Sunday, calm to light southwesterly winds will reduce dispersion, allowing pollutants to accumulate over the Bayou State. However, hot and humid conditions along with widely scattered showers and thunderstorms will aid low-level mixing. In addition, pollutant carryover will be low. As a result, AQI levels will be Good to high-Good. Monday, partly cloudy skies and scattered showers and thunderstorms will hinder ozone development. However, light and variable winds will limit dispersion. Therefore, AQI levels will range from Good to low-Moderate. Tuesday, increasing sun and highs in the mid- to upper-90s will aid ozone formation. In addition, calm to light southeasterly winds will hinder dispersion, resulting in high-Good to low-Moderate AQI levels in most locations.
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Shreveport 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.
The refinery inside the city has a long history of trouble
Calumet's Shreveport refinery has been a fixture near downtown since the early 20th century, sitting across I-20 from the Louisiana State Fairgrounds — practically in the middle of town. On the morning of October 30, 2008, a sour-water tank at the refinery, holding a mix of water, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, exploded and caught fire. The tank collapsed and spilled into a containment moat, where the material burned itself out by late morning, but not before smoke had spread across much of the city. The refinery itself was evacuated; the surrounding neighborhoods were not, and no one was hurt.
That wasn't an isolated event. EPA on-scene coordinators have been dispatched to the same facility more than once since, including a separate incident involving another sour-water tank that brought in the agency's START air-monitoring team to confirm the plume wasn't a threat beyond the fence line. It's why Shreveport's air story isn't really about wildfire smoke the way it is out West — it's about knowing when an industrial release, not a distant fire, is the thing worth watching for.
Hot, still summer days are when the numbers actually move
Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality runs the Shreveport-area monitor at the Downtown Airport, tracking ozone, fine particles (PM2.5), and sulfur dioxide around the clock. Caddo Parish isn't one of the ozone nonattainment areas the EPA tracks the way Baton Rouge has been — Shreveport doesn't run afoul of the federal ozone standard — but that doesn't mean the numbers never move. On a muggy, sun-baked afternoon with little wind, the same stagnant air that makes a Shreveport summer feel unbearable also lets both ozone and fine particles build up instead of dispersing, occasionally nudging the AQI into the Moderate range.
That's a real, current pattern, not a hypothetical: on a typical summer afternoon the Downtown Airport monitor can log ozone comfortably in the Good range while PM2.5 quietly climbs into Moderate territory at the same time. It's rarely dramatic enough to make the news, but it's exactly the kind of day a sensitive-group reading matters — someone with asthma running errands at 3 p.m. is breathing measurably different air than the same person at 8 a.m.
Bossier City shares the air, and the river doesn't separate it
Shreveport and Bossier City face each other across the Red River, close enough that a plume from one side reaches the other in minutes, not hours. Whatever affects the west bank — refinery flaring, traffic backed up on I-20 or I-49, a still summer afternoon — shows up in Bossier City's air too, and vice versa. That's why a single official monitor at the Downtown Airport can only tell you about one point in a metro area that spans two parishes and reaches towns like Blanchard, Benton, and Haughton.
Canairy reads the denser network of PurpleAir sensors spread across both banks instead of relying on that one government station, so the reading you see reflects the neighborhood you actually saved, not just downtown. On the handful of days a year when the refinery or the heat pushes the numbers up, that's the difference between a citywide guess and a real answer for your street.
Shreveport air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Shreveport right now?
As of September 14, 2026 at 7:02 PM CDT, the air quality in Shreveport, Louisiana is AQI 23 — Good — with PM2.5 at 4.2 µg/m³, the median of 3 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Does the Calumet refinery affect Shreveport's air quality?
It has, on occasion. The refinery sits inside the city, across I-20 from the Louisiana State Fairgrounds, and has a history of tank fires and releases — including a sour-water-tank explosion on October 30, 2008 that sent smoke across much of the city, and later incidents that brought EPA air-monitoring teams back to the site. These events are infrequent, but when one happens, a nearby PurpleAir sensor will show it well before any official alert goes out.
Why does Shreveport's air get worse on hot, muggy summer days?
Shreveport's humid subtropical climate means calm, sun-baked afternoons are common in summer, and that stagnant air lets both ozone and fine particles build up instead of clearing out. Caddo Parish doesn't carry an EPA ozone nonattainment designation, but the local monitor at the Downtown Airport regularly logs Moderate PM2.5 on days like these, even when nothing unusual is burning.
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 Shreveport, 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 Shreveport
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