Good (0-50) AQI Cities

Run, bike, garden, hike, sit on the porch — Good AQI means none of that triggers air-quality concerns. Schools can hold outdoor recess and athletics without restriction. Hospitals do not see ER admissions tied to air pollution at this level.

Cities that hold Good AQI year-round have some of the lowest rates of asthma, COPD, lung cancer, and cardiovascular mortality in the developed world. Long-term residence in clean-air metros is associated with measurably longer life expectancy — research from Harvard, USC, and the EPA consistently finds 0.5 to 1.0 years of additional life expectancy for each 10-µg/m³ reduction in long-term PM2.5.

For residents of Good AQI cities, the right move is to keep it that way: support transit and clean energy at the local level, watch for upwind industrial or wildfire developments that could erode air quality, and consider a basic indoor air sensor (Awair, Airthings, IQAir) to catch any anomalies the city-level number misses.

Good AQI tends to cluster in coastal cities with steady ocean breezes (much of the Pacific Northwest and Northeast outside summer ozone), high-elevation mountain towns away from valleys, and rural areas without major industrial sources. The common factor is geography that ventilates pollution away rather than trapping it.

Among the 932 cities in the good range, the top concentration is in FL (37), NC (36), PA (35), OH (34), IN (34). The dominant pollutant across these cities is PM2.5 (465 cities), followed by Ozone (431), PM10 (29), NO2 (4), CO (3).