According to Air Now the Air Quality Index (AQI) is an index for reporting daily air quality.
The AQI is determined by counting primarily the following pollutant counts: - Carbon monoxide - Nitrogen dioxide - Sulphur dioxide - Ozone - Particulate matter
It should be noted that while presence of ozone is beneficial at the stratosphere level where it blocks the harmful ultra violet rayes from enetring the Earth’s atmosphere, the presence of ozone at lower levels is considered harmful for the environment.
In this blog we will study the pollution pattern for the state of Texas.
The data used to analyse the air quality pattern for Texas from 2000 to 2016 has been taken from Kaggle, scraped from the database of U.S. EPA.
First, separate the pollutant data for Texas.
This database does not have the numbers for particulate matter. For the purpose of this blog, we will separate out the data for carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ground level ozone.
After you’re ready with the Texas data, separate out the data for each of the four pollutants mentioned above. This will help us plot a few graphs where we can see patterns of inodividual pollutants.
FALSE Date State City NO2.Mean
FALSE 1 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 28.00000
FALSE 2 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 28.00000
FALSE 3 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 28.00000
FALSE 4 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 28.00000
FALSE 5 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 13.14286
FALSE 6 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 13.14286FALSE Date State City SO2.Mean
FALSE 1 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 3.000
FALSE 2 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 3.000
FALSE 3 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 2.975
FALSE 4 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 2.975
FALSE 5 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 1.000
FALSE 6 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 1.000FALSE Date State City O3.Mean
FALSE 1 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.020458
FALSE 2 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.020458
FALSE 3 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.020458
FALSE 4 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.020458
FALSE 5 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 0.008708
FALSE 6 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 0.008708FALSE Date State City CO.Mean
FALSE 1 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.633333
FALSE 2 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.573684
FALSE 3 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.633333
FALSE 4 2000-01-01 Texas Dallas 0.573684
FALSE 5 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 0.131818
FALSE 6 2000-01-02 Texas Dallas 0.075000The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) suggests AQI of 0-50 causes absolutely no health concerns. From the above graph we can see that between 2000 - 2016 the NO2 levels in the Texas air have been well between 0-50.