2023 report<\/a> from Philadelphia Air Management Services, part of the city\u2019s public health agency, showed that many air pollutants, though not ozone, were decreasing in the city.<\/p>\nThe Philadelphia Department of Public Health already operated an ambient air monitoring network, using ten permanent stations to track air quality. Despite collecting critical information, said James Garrow, the city\u2019s deputy health commissioner, those stations do not offer real-time data and some neighborhoods are out of range.<\/p>\n
He said city\u2019s air quality index is healthy on most days, but weather, wildfire smoke and traffic patterns can cause sudden changes, making it important to collect hyperlocal data.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen this in the past where we\u2019ll have a fire or an explosion in the city and the nearest air monitor is upwind, so potentially people could have been exposed to things without ever knowing, and we would never know that it was there,\u201d Garrow said in an interview.<\/p>\n
He said that the new sensor system has already shown its effectiveness, detecting an orange alert due to a junkyard fire in the city\u2019s Gray\u2019s Ferry neighborhood on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Garrow said that the real-time data captured by the sensors will also allow more timely emergency responses and public health warnings, by dispatching the department\u2019s mobile van, outfitted with toxic-air monitoring equipment, to the impacted area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is, if something goes red unexpectedly or bad, and that\u2019s not the same as any of the other monitors in the area, that triggers us to dispatch that, and the mobile monitor truck will drive around the neighborhood and collect data and be able to help us issue warnings to the public if needed,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Garrow said the city\u2019s health department plans to expand the air monitoring network, adding additional sensors to measure the ozone layer, as soon as this spring, to help identify long-term pollution trends across the city and guide future air-quality regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many variations day to day, but as we figure out, over seasons and over years,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019ll be able to see if a particular monitor seems to be a couple of degrees higher than the rest of them and investigate if there\u2019s anything causing worse levels of air quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t![\"Sophia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/sophiafox.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tWritten by Sophia Fox-Sowell
\n\t\t\tSophia Fox-Sowell reports on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and government regulation for StateScoop. She was previously a multimedia producer for CNET, where her coverage focused on private sector innovation in food production, climate change and space through podcasts and video content. She earned her bachelor\u2019s in anthropology at Wagner College and master\u2019s in media innovation from Northeastern University.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia on Wednesday launched a network of 76 ground-level sensors that will deliver real-time air quality data to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5051,55935,55936,69,71,70,19962,17649],"class_list":{"0":"post-117872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-air-pollution","9":"tag-air-quality-index","10":"tag-environmental-sensors","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","13":"tag-philadelphia-news","14":"tag-state-local-news","15":"tag-technology-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}