Right now: Kansas City is at 53, moderate.
Is the air safe to breathe in Kansas City today?
In Kansas City, BreatheCheck reads 53 as Go. The cutoffs: go below 101, keep it short and easy from 101 to 150, move it indoors above 150. These are our own thresholds, drawn on the EPA bands — EPA itself classifies 101–150 as Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups and does not tell you how long to stay out.
Go AQI 0–100
Normal outdoor plans. No change needed.
Short & unloaded AQI 101–150
A 20-minute dog walk, not a 2.5-hour run. Keep it brief and easy.
Don’t go AQI 151+
Move it indoors. Above 200 that becomes everyone, not just sensitive groups.
Above 200 this stops being a personal call: everyone indoors.
Duration and intensity are two separate dials
| Under 20 min | 20–60 min | Over an hour | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Go | Go | Go |
| Moderate | Go | Go | Go |
| Hard | Go | Go | Go |
Go Every combination lands the same way at this reading — a hard hour is no different from an easy twenty minutes. The two dials separate above 80.
Where people actually draw the line
All the thresholds people reported, and who reported them
- 60 Asthmatic runnerone runner’s own 156-run log
- 75–100 Daycare / schoolparents and staff in one r/toddlers thread, Aug 2025 — not a published rule
- 100 Parentcommunity-reported, escalating at 150 and 200
- 110 Runnercommunity-reported
If you’re staying in, filter the room you’re actually in
A metro inside its own state's burn ban
Kansas City is one of very few large metros whose own counties are named in a state burn restriction written for agriculture happening well outside them. Kansas rules adopted in 2011 close Johnson and Wyandotte counties, the Kansas half of this metro, to almost all open burning for the whole month of April. What the rule leaves permitted in that window is the Flint Hills prairie burning that made it necessary in the first place. The metro is not the source. It is the downwind side, and the calendar it is being managed against belongs to ranchers to the south and west.
Kansas’s authority stops at the state line, and the line runs through the middle of the metro. Jackson County and the rest of the Missouri side, where most of the population lives, fall outside that April rule entirely. A plume crossing on a south wind does not.
The metro’s own contribution moves on freight. I-70 and I-35 cross here, and by annual rail tonnage the Association of American Railroads has placed Kansas City second in the country behind Chicago, with only a few percent between them. Diesel from the highways and the yards feeds the nitrogen oxides that build ozone through hot, stagnant summer afternoons. That is the half of the year when a bad reading here is most likely to have been made locally rather than delivered.
Where this number sits
Of the 121 US metros reporting to us right now, Kansas City is number 15 and the highest of the 2 we track in Missouri. The pollutant driving it today is PM10.
Nearby metros we also measure, and what they read at the same hour:
- Overland Park, KS — 10 miles away, AQI 53
- Lincoln, NE — 161 miles away, AQI 42
- Omaha, NE — 166 miles away, AQI 36
- Wichita, KS — 178 miles away, AQI 42
Where this reading comes from
AirNow’s Kansas City reporting area, about 2.1 miles from the metro centre.
What has air quality in Kansas City actually been?
3 of the 30 days we have recorded so far went above AQI 100.
| Date | Daily max AQI | EPA band | Hours read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 56 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 52 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 55 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 47 | Good | 23 | |
| 87 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 100 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 53 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 119 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 133 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 64 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 58 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 90 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 112 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 90 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 80 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 61 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 65 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 75 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 66 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 69 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 64 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 61 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 68 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 97 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 52 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 60 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 56 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 46 | Good | 26 | |
| 48 | Good | 7 — partial day |
Questions about Kansas City
What is the air quality in Kansas City right now?
Which monitor does this number come from?
How does Kansas City compare with metros nearby?
Does this include pollen?
Put this number in context
Updated