The Air Quality Health Index Variation across British Columbia (PDF, 149.2KB) report is an overview of the AQHI and how it was developed to provide British Columbians with an estimate of short-term health risk caused by degraded air quality. in March 2021 following successful pilot and peer-reviewed health studies supporting its application. The adjustment started as a pilot in May 2018 and adopted in B.C. to improve the accuracy of the reported health risk from smoke throughout the year. Therefore an adjustment to AQHI, called AQHI-Plus, is being made in B.C. contact the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy at for air quality questions or concerns within Metro Vancouver.įor health-related questions contact your Regional Health Authority.Įlevated smoke concentrations have been shown to sometimes cause the AQHI to under-report health risk. For more information on provincial Air Quality Objectives, visit BC Ambient Air Quality Objectives.įor questions related to air quality in B.C. Whenever the 24-hour PM2.5 average exceeds the Objective, that typically indicates poor air quality.Īir Quality Objectives (AQOs) are limits on the acceptable level of contaminants in the air, established by government agencies to protect human health and the environment. To gauge air quality, 24-hour PM2.5 averages are compared to the provincial Air Quality Objective of 25 μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter of air). A daily average is also calculated based on PM2.5 concentrations over 24 hours, midnight-to-midnight, for any given day. A 24-hour running average is obtained every hour as the average PM2.5 concentration over the previous 24 hours, which is used for air quality advisories. The one-hour averages provide valuable information on rapid changes in PM2.5 levels and are essentially used to calculate the AQHI.īased on the available one-hour averages, 24-hour averages of PM2.5 concentrations are then determined in two ways.
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