Air Quality Flag Program

What Color is Your Air Today? text is displayed. Community members gather and play outside in front of school building. Air quality flags line the scene.

The Air Quality Flag Program uses brightly colored flags based on the U.S. EPA’s Air Quality Index to notify people and their communities about outdoor air quality conditions. Organizations raise a flag each day that corresponds to their local air quality forecast.

The Air Quality Index is a guide for reporting daily air quality. It uses colors and numbers to show how clean or polluted the air is. EPA uses the Air Quality Index to report ground-level ozone and particle pollution. For each pollutant, EPA has established national standards to protect people’s health.

The Air Quality Flag Program creates public awareness of outdoor air quality conditions. People can continue to get plenty of physical activity, while still protecting their health from poor air quality.

How the Air Quality Flag Program works:

Each day, your organization raises a flag that corresponds to how clean or polluted the air is.
The color of the flag matches EPA's Air Quality Index: green, yellow, orange, red, and purple.
On unhealthy days, your organization can use this information to adjust physical activities to help reduce exposure to air pollution, while still keeping people active.

Getting started:

Use the Quick Start Guide or follow these four steps to implement the Air Quality Flag Program at your organization:

1. Purchase the flags

Purchase or craft flags, depending on your organization's resources. Here are some flag ordering tips if purchasing flags is an option for your organization.

2. Educate your organization and the community

Learn about the Air Quality Index colors and read through the Coordinator Handbook and the Fact Sheet.

Use the sample parent letter or employee email and the sample press release to tell people about the program.

Schools may want to check out additional materials specifically for students and teachers. Schools may also put up the Air Quality Flag poster in hallways or classrooms to remind everyone what the colors mean.

3. Fly the day's air quality flag

On the AirNow Air Quality Flag Program website, click Which flag do I fly? and enter your zip code. At airnow.gov, you can sign up to get AQI emails, download the AirNow app, or install an AQI widget.

4. Take actions when the air quality is unhealthy

See what actions to take for each color with the activity guides, while still keeping the community active.

Please complete this online registration form when you adopt a flag program. EPA will add your organization to the online list of program participants and to our Story Map.