If you live in Louisiana, Ohio, or Kentucky (and soon West Virginia), you may be exposed to more air pollution than you know because air monitoring is restricted. Additionally, data from air monitoring done by local communities (using air sensors that are readily available and inexpensive) is not allowed to be used as evidence of air pollution.
And why is that? The chemical industry has been able to get laws passed in those 3 states that restrict the air monitoring. And they want more states to pass similar laws.
Unfortunately, the EPA has cut back its air monitoring program - not only by reducing the number of sites monitored, but also what chemicals are being looked for in the air. It's so bad that nearly six in 10 US counties have no public air monitor at all, according to a 2025 study. The study found that more than half of US counties are air quality monitoring deserts, without even a single monitoring station. Which is why inexpensive air monitors that residents and towns can easily buy are so important in detecting what is in the air.
This means that even if residents or town employees collect data or evidence that there is an air pollution problem in a town (e.g., from a nearby company) regulators are not allowed to act on it. Only expensive EPA approved equipment (costing tens of thousands of dollars) at official monitoring sites is allowed. However, the official monitoring may not be looking for the chemicals that are actually being released by companies or the monitors may be miles away from the most polluting companies.
The bottom line is: If no one is monitoring the air in all these places, can problems ever be found? If you don't measure what is in the air, then you don't know. And even if residents suspect or know there is a problem, what can be done if the data they collect is "not good enough"?
Is all this surprising? Eh... not these days.
Excerpts frrom The Guardian: Chemical industry backed laws in three US states to restrict use of air pollution data
As public air monitors disappear, federal rollbacks and state laws are making it harder than ever to know what’s in the air.
As the US’s network for monitoring air pollution deteriorates, a Floodlight investigation has found that the chemical industry is going state-to-state to restrict one of the few options citizens have left for holding polluters accountable: low-cost air sensors.
Over the past two years, the non-profit investigative newsroom determined, lawmakers in Louisiana, Kentucky and Ohio have passed strikingly similar laws barring regulators from acting on air-quality data that communities collect themselves – unless it comes from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved equipment that typically costs tens of thousands of dollars. Similar legislation has repeatedly been introduced in West Virginia.
People have turned to low-cost sensors at a time when the public network they used to rely on is thinning out. Federal grants supporting that network have fallen more than 35% over the past two decades, adjusted for inflation, and the number of government air monitors nationwide has fallen by nearly half over the same period, according to EPA data.
Today, nearly six in 10 US counties have no public air monitor at all, according to a 2025 study.
Floodlight examined the largest industrial sources of air pollution in Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia – and compared the chemicals they reported releasing with what government monitors in those states can detect. At 71 of the 100 facilities examined, the chemical released in the greatest quantity is not measured by any government monitor in the state.
In Louisiana, a national center of oil, gas and petrochemical production, public monitors are often miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals.
Community groups tried to close that gap. A $500,000 federal grant would have let the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (Lean) monitor 27 communities it identified as pollution hotspots. But the group installed monitors in only four communities before the Trump administration canceled the grant last year.
Kentucky followed in 2025, passing a similar measure which requires “scientifically defensible” methods. That phrase had appeared in an American Chemistry Council (ACC) blogpost two years earlier. The ACC then lobbied for the Kentucky bill alongside the American Petroleum Institute as well as Chemours and fellow industry powerhouse Dow Chemical.
Kentucky already had proof that monitoring works. Regulators there documented toxic air around Louisville’s industrial Rubbertown, then enacted a plan and revised regulations. As a result, toxic air contaminants across the metro area fell by almost 80%, while the most dangerous chemicals fell by 96%.