Hello,
Airparif is an independent organization, approved to monitor air quality in Île-de-France. We work hard to provide reliable, as accurate as possible information about the state of air pollution across the entire region, so there’s no reason to underestimate the pollution levels we all breathe.
When it comes to pollution episodes, you might get the impression that we issue alerts when an episode begins, even though air quality can sometimes have been deteriorating for several days. That’s possible. The Air Quality Index (AQI) we use to represent air quality on our real-time maps in our app and on our website [more information: https://www.airparif.fr/surveiller-la-pollution/la-pollution-en-direct-en-ile-de-france] is different from the thresholds used to trigger a pollution episode. Those thresholds are calculated differently, based on expected average pollution levels over a certain area of the region (100 km²) or affecting at least a minimum share of the population there (10%) [more information: https://www.airparif.fr/procedure-dinformation-et-dalerte]. So it’s possible to see a red map in our app without our having anticipated a pollution episode. These thresholds aren’t raised—in fact, they’re lowered to reflect new scientific findings about air pollution. The evidence shows that pollution has health impacts at lower levels than previously estimated [see, for example: https://www.airparif.fr/actualite/2021/impact-des-nouveaux-seuils-de-reference-de-loms-sur-lile-de-france].
You can find all of this information on our app and website—not only as “colored maps,” but also as concentration data for the main air pollutants. [By clicking on a specific point on our real-time map: https://www.airparif.fr/surveiller-la-pollution/la-pollution-en-direct-en-ile-de-france, or via the readings from each of our monitoring stations: https://www.airparif.fr/carte-des-stations].
If you’d like, we’re also happy to discuss this with you directly: you can reach us through our contact form at https://www.airparif.fr/contact.
Sincerely.