Air pollution is impacting the life expectancy of Black and Latino residents in Chicago, according to a report from the Chicago Department of Public Health. Last fall, CDPH and the University of Illinois Chicago joined forces to combat this gap by installing 277 air quality monitors around the city, the largest system of its kind in the United States. “It’s collecting concentrations of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide,” said Grace Adams, environmental health projects administrator at CDPH. “There’s one in at least every community area and at least one in every ward, so that way we are getting full, city-wide coverage and we can understand what’s happening at the hyperlocal level.”
Some backstory: Since 2023, Chicago has seen record-breaking amounts of air pollution. Smoke from wildfires in Canada and the western United States drifted into various parts of the city, contributing to worsening air quality. Serap Erdal, Open Air Chicago project leader and UIC School of Public Health professor, said these phenomena worsen in the summer. “The higher temperatures serve as a catalyst for chemical reactions in the atmosphere, so that results in higher concentrations of ozone and other pollutants,” Erdal said. Earlier this year, the American Lung Association ranked the Chicago-Naperville area’s air pollution as one of the worst in the country in its State of the Air Report. Open Air Chicago is hoping to help change that ranking and protect Chicago residents, especially those on the South and West sides. Jaime Groth Searle, founder and executive director of the Southwest Collective, a neighborhood organization working to improve quality of life on Chicago’s Southwest Side, said the region’s industrial history also contributes to higher rates of air pollution. “There is a lot happening, a lot being made, a lot being transported across our interstates, our rivers, our airways,” Groth Searle said. “There are some neighborhoods where that is happening a lot more than others, and they happen to be on the South, the West and the Southwest and Southeast sides.”
