What is Air quality
Educating our community about air quality.
Brazoria County Air Quality
Air pollution doesn’t need to be visible to be present. You could be breathing in air pollutants without even knowing it. Does Brazoria County’s air feel safe to you? It's not. Houston has the eighth worst air quality in the United States.
How is air quality measured?
The Air Quality Index (AQI) is a standard system used for measuring air quality. AQI indicates pollution concentration in a certain area using a numeric value. These values are categorized as good, moderate, and different levels of unhealthy to measure relative danger. Brazoria County falls into the moderate category 56% of days and is worse than 94% of U.S. cities. This means that Brazoria has a moderate risk from air quality, and this risk is likely to get worse in the future.
What makes Brazoria’s air quality so unhealthy?
Many industrial activities occur in Brazoria. As a result, frequent industrial emissions pollute the air with tiny particles called particulate matter. Constant exposure to particulate matter can cause heart and lung damage.
Among the areas with the most emissions is the Freeport area, where industries such as Dow Chemical and Olin. Dow alone is Texas’ second largest emitter of benzene and fifth largest emitter of nitrogen oxides. Northeast Brazoria is the location of the Chocolate Bayou Plant, which releases particulate matter, greenhouse gases, and nitrogen oxides, making it one of the largest polluters in the Brazoria area. Both the Brazosport and Manvel areas, adjacent to industrial corridors, are vulnerable to pollutants because they lack heavy vegetation.
Brazoria County’s air quality is in a dire state, and it is our job to support and protect our community