Right now: Columbia is at 54, moderate.
Is the air safe to breathe in Columbia today?
In Columbia, BreatheCheck reads 54 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
Prescribed fire season on the fall line
Columbia’s particulate year has a season attached to it. January through April is prescribed-burn season in the pine country of the Midlands, and South Carolina’s environmental agency has issued fine-particulate advisories naming Richland, Lexington and Kershaw among the counties covered. Research across the Southeast puts prescribed fire at around 20 percent of daily ambient PM2.5 in affected areas over that window. The burns are planned, legal and deliberate, and they still produce plumes narrow enough to haze one side of the metro while the other side stays clear.
Where the city sits decides where that smoke settles. Columbia is built at the fall line, where the Piedmont steps down onto the Coastal Plain. The Broad and the Saluda meet here to form the Congaree, at a little over 120 feet, and the built ground climbs out of those bottoms onto the sandhills behind them. On a still night the river bottoms hold cool air and whatever is suspended in it for a few hours, until the sun works the layer off through the morning. That is a much shallower and shorter-lived trap than the multi-day lids western basins produce.
Summer changes the pollutant entirely. South Carolina forecasts ground-level ozone daily from April 1 through September 30, and the Central Midlands is one of the four regions that forecast covers.
Where this number sits
Of the 121 US metros reporting to us right now, Columbia is number 14 and number 2 of the 2 we track in South Carolina. The pollutant driving it today is O3.
Nearby metros we also measure, and what they read at the same hour:
- Charlotte, NC — 86 miles away, AQI 52
- Charleston, SC — 106 miles away, AQI 59
- Savannah, GA — 133 miles away, AQI 52
- Raleigh, NC — 182 miles away, AQI 53
Where this reading comes from
AirNow’s Columbia reporting area, about 8.7 miles from the metro centre.
What has air quality in Columbia actually been?
0 of the 30 days we have recorded so far went above AQI 100.
| Date | Daily max AQI | EPA band | Hours read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 58 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 53 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 48 | Good | 23 | |
| 44 | Good | 23 | |
| 45 | Good | 23 | |
| 44 | Good | 23 | |
| 39 | Good | 23 | |
| 42 | Good | 23 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 59 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 62 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 64 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 41 | Good | 23 | |
| 55 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 56 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 58 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 57 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 65 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 56 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 61 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 61 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 60 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 81 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 93 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 54 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 59 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 63 | Moderate | 26 | |
| 57 | Moderate | 7 — partial day |
Questions about Columbia
What is the air quality in Columbia right now?
Which monitor does this number come from?
How does Columbia compare with metros nearby?
Does this include pollen?
Put this number in context
Updated