Air Quality Awareness Week promotes taking action to improve air quality

The Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown Metropolitan Area remains close to exceeding the ground-level ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard and the upcoming National Air Quality Awareness Week, May 3 through May 7, reminds people to take action in preventing air pollution. CAPCOG encourages all jurisdictions to support the national campaign themed, Healthy Air — Important for Everyone, by bringing awareness to their communities.

“Being Air Aware and protecting our air quality is invaluable to our communities as poor air quality can affect the health of children, older adults, and people with lung or heart disease,” said Christiane Alepuz, CAPCOG regional planning and services program coordinator. “Actions taken now to reduce air pollutants can prevent impacts to our health, our economy and our transportation infrastructure as we avoid federal regulations from being enacted if we were to violate the national standard.”

Jurisdictions can participate in Air Quality Awareness week by sharing CAPCOG’s Air Central Texas social media posts, making their own proclamations, promoting methods on reducing air pollutants and more. CAPCOG’s Air Central Texas social media accounts include @AirCentraltexas on Twitter, twitter.com/AirCentralTexas, and Air Central Texas on Facebook, facebook.com/AirCentralTexas. The CAPCOG Executive Committee is slated to proclaim the week Nation Air Quality Awareness Week at its April meeting. A sample proclamation can be downloaded at capcog.org and AirCentralTexas.org. The national week will target five air quality topics to increase awareness and encourage people to check the Air Quality Index (AQI) daily. The topics are wildfires and smoke, asthma and your health, citizen science and air quality sensors, environmental justice communities and air quality, and air quality around the world.

Get more information about the awareness campaign.