Wayne County is tackling its air quality crisis with a new network of 100 hyperlocal monitors, launched in partnership with environmental service company
JustAir to track pollution in real time. Led by Wayne County executive Warren Evans and
Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services director and health officer Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the network aims to provide residents with accurate, accessible air quality data, empowering them to take action for cleaner air.
“Wayne County and JustAir believe that everyone has a right to breathe clean air — air that isn’t polluted with harmful chemicals,” says El-Sayed. “The Wayne County Air Quality Network ultimately will give residents and decision makers critical and actionable information needed to provide cleaner air for all.”
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The initiative, part of JustAir’s broader expansion with public health agencies across Michigan and beyond, marks a significant collaboration with environmental justice leaders and local nonprofits, sparking community involvement and policy changes aimed at safeguarding public health.
“This air quality network is focused on gathering hyperlocal and accurate air quality data throughout Wayne County’s 43 communities,” says El-Sayed. “Working with JustAir will help us achieve our goal of informing our communities and providing safer air for our residents.”
Launched in 2021, JustAir was co-founded by Darren Riley, who was determined to improve access to air quality information after developing asthma living in Detroit.
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Graphs and maps of air quality via Just Air's website.JustAir currently partners with a number of cities across Michigan, including Detroit, Dearborn, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Waterbury, as well as broadening its scope to other states like Illinois, North Carolina, and North Dakota. Its partnership with the whole of Wayne County began in August of 2023, with the organization working alongside Detroit nonprofit
Green Door Initiative to install the county’s new air quality monitoring network.
“Wayne County has some of the worst stats nationally on air quality,” says JustAir project manager Kristy Allen. “Something unique about this partnership is that we’ve worked hand-in-hand with environmental justice leaders, nonprofit leaders, and business leaders that value public health transparency and protecting air quality rights.”
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Kristy Allen
The network of air quality monitors was completed in May 2024 after a number of meetings with county residents and officials to determine areas of highest need. Now, county residents are able to view their neighborhood’s active air quality information through JustAir’s
Air Quality dashboard, which shows accurate air quality information, as well as alerting residents when a monitor is undergoing maintenance. The air quality information can also be found at
justair.app and on the county’s
website.
“We’re only a year into a project that will go through 2026 and have already learned so much about what community members care about,” says Allen. “The hope and dream is that we continue to work with the county to finetune locations where monitors are based on changing county contexts.”
Allen explains that once the network has been active for one year, residents will be able to contact JustAir to see a particular monitor’s historical data and find out if air quality has improved over time in their neighborhood.
Allen says that the response throughout the communities where JustAir has installed its air quality monitors has been positive, with the regular updates and maintenance allowing for a number of local administrative actions to take place. Some of these actions include
fugitive dust ordinances in
Dearborn and
Detroit, pushing for more electric-vehicle public transit in
Detroit and other communities, and a new no-idling law passed by
Wayne County commissioners. Allen says that the support is going beyond changing public health policy and is also driving community members to improve not just the health of their neighborhood, but also to build stronger relationships with their neighbors and beautify their public spaces.
“One community in Wayne [Detroit's East Canfield neighborhood] partnered with us to install a weather ball for air quality, and the community worked with an amazing sculptor and activist for a public art installation around it,” says Allen. “The community has a visual representation of the air quality monitoring network that they designed and implemented. We just showed up with the technology.”
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In Detroit, a truck drives on Jefferson Ave. while smoke billows from Zug Island.
Another instance of community engagement was actually present before the county’s partnership with JustAir began. Jennifer Fassbender, a resident of Detroit’s east side, is a member of the
Detroit Hamtramck Coalition For Advancing Healthy Environments, which aims to “address health impacts through research and oral histories for residents.”
“Having this partnership with experts on AQ [air quality] and the monitors is priceless for groups like ours. Their monitors provide the needed data, and Kristy is continuously responsive, helpful, and supportive in meeting us where we are,” says Fassbender. “JustAir is advancing environmental justice across this county by doing the work that it does.”
The 300-member Detroit Hamtramck Coalition for Advancing Healthy Environments got its start in 2016 as the
Coalition to Oppose the Expansion of US Ecology in protest of the Idaho-based hazardous waste disposal company’s waste storage at its Detroit facility. US Ecology waste disposal practices had previously violated EPA regulations at its other locations across the country. One of its two Detroit facilities was
fined by state regulators for persistent and strong odors and improper hazardous waste handling last year. After four years of meeting with officials and hosting rallies, the group was able to halt US Ecology’s receipt of an expansion permit from the
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in 2020.
“Working with JustAir to find as many strategic places in the area where the Detroit-Hamtramck Coalition focuses on to place monitors and bolster places with more advanced equipment that already had basic monitors furthered a sense of optimism for me,” says Fassbender. “After monitors went up, I was able to work with Kristy to shift necessary angles to ensure the best data feedback.”
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Trees are also essential to improving Detroit's air quality.
The Coalition has worked closely with JustAir to help determine areas for air quality monitors in addition to its work doing advocacy and education regarding air and water quality throughout the city.
“The Detroit Hamtramck Coalition is a public health-focused, environmental justice organization, focused on the eastside of Detroit and Hamtramck, which are areas that are exposed to many layers of environmental pollution,” says Fassbender. “We see the work of JustAir as integral to our work, as we pursue understanding the cumulative impacts of what it means to live in a place with so many hazards in our environment.”
Rylee Barnsdale is a Michigan native and longtime Washtenaw County resident. She wants to use her journalistic experience from her time at Eastern Michigan University writing for the Eastern Echo to tell the stories of Washtenaw County residents that need to be heard.
Photos by Nick Hagen.
The Yours, Mine, and Ours — Public Health series highlights how our state's public health agencies keep us healthy, safe, and informed about issues impacting physical and mental health in our communities, homes, workplaces, and schools. The series is made possible with funding from the Michigan Association for Local Public Health.