Standard

Air Quality Index

Standardized measure converting pollutant concentrations into a single number and category for public health advisories; scales vary by country.

Known aliases

Current stories

scienceConfirmed3 publishers

Haze shuts schools across Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and four Malaysian states

Malaysia shut schools in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and four states on Oct 9 as haze drove air quality to unhealthy levels. How much warning families get next time depends on which of the education ministry's two pollutant-index triggers is crossed.

Publishers:channelnewsasia.comgulfnews.comphys.orgstraitstimes.com

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers

Builder: Builder 13%
Operator: Operator 71%
Investor: Investor 16%

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption: Insufficient
Hype gap0
Incentives: Insufficient
Confidence70

scienceOne report1 publisher

A briefcase of filters put smoke-metal estimates on a Colorado fire crew's phone

Stanford's SmokeCast prototype rode a fire truck 300 miles in July 2026 and fed soil-metal likelihoods to the crew's app, while the smoke samples that could test those estimates stayed in a cartridge for 14 days.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence36
Adoption11
Hype gap+34
Incentives64
Confidence44

scienceOne report1 publisher

A storm count explains 70 percent of the year-to-year swing in northern India's winter smog

A Science Advances study ties winter pollution across northern India to how often Mediterranean storm systems arrive. The storm count is itself linked to ocean temperature patterns visible the previous autumn.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption: Insufficient
Hype gap+18
Incentives45
Confidence58

scienceOne report1 publisher

US wildfire smoke deaths are projected to rise 73 percent by 2050

One 2025 study puts smoke-attributable US deaths at 41,380 a year for the 2010s and 71,420 by 2050. That turns a summer emergency into a line item public health and workplace planners carry every year.

Publishers:livescience.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption: Insufficient
Hype gap+14
Incentives32
Confidence52

scienceOne report1 publisher

Wildfire smoke has clawed back a quarter of 40 years of clean-air gains, and desk jobs are not exempt

A Georgia Tech economist puts the erosion at more than half in many Western states, with health damages running to $130 billion a year. The productivity losses are the part nobody books.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption: Insufficient
Hype gap+22
Incentives58
Confidence41