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why does my chest hurt rule
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
There are roughly 13,000 acres on fire within 20 miles of me (and about 10 million other people). Fortunately since I have asthma we already have 2 air purifiers that are running full blast.
Probably the scariest part of how toxic the air is right now is that it looks absolutely clear outside. Without checking the weather I would have never known it was that bad.
The unit is AQI (short for Air Quality Index). In the USA, AQI is the maximum value of a function run against measurements made over time for (any or all of) PM2.5, PM10, O3, SO2, and NOx. AQI is widely used, but the specific definition of air quality varies regionally. If some country or city has terrible levels of something other than what I mentioned earlier, it wouldn't make sense to use the same scale that the USA uses.
It's useful for us asthmatics because shit in the air is shit in the air. If I were especially sensitive to a particular chemical then I might need to dive into a specific AQI for just that chemical, or look at the actual metrics used to compute the AQI and adjust my air filtering needs accordingly.
EDIT: This is, quite frankly, a shit explanation. The Wikipedia article I linked has a great breakdown of how the AQI is calculated in various countries. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you're curious.