TEECS’s Green Team has adopted the Air Quality Flag Program
How much pollution is in the air today? You can find out by simply looking at our main entrance as well as at the bottom of our Green Team page for weather alert widgets (https://teecs.org/green-teams/). TEECS’s Green Team has adopted the Air Quality Flag Program, which means we will fly brightly colored flags to show how clean the air is each day.
The flags correspond to the colors of the Air Quality Index (www.airnow.gov). The AQI is an index for reporting daily air quality. It tells you how clean or polluted the air is, and what health effects might be a concern for you at that level.
Every day we will fly a flag with one of the AQI colors:
- Green – good air quality
- Yellow – moderate air quality
- Orange – unhealthy for some people, including children and those with asthma
- Red – unhealthy for everyone
- Purple – very unhealthy for everyone
On green and yellow days, we will encourage people to be outside and moving. When air quality is orange or red, it is still OK for most people to exercise and work outside, but take some breaks and do activities that are not as strenuous, like walking instead of running. If the flag is purple, you might consider staying inside that day.
TEECS has posted our Protocol for Unhealthy Outdoor Air Days. You can view this document on the Green Team’s page at teecs.org/About/EnergySmart.
If you would like to receive your own air quality alerts, you can sign up with EnviroFlash (https://www.enviroflash.info/). EnviroFlash is a system that sends automatic e-mails or text messages to subscribers about a location’s daily outdoor air quality forecast plus suggested safety measures when measured levels are unhealthy.