When you move, you typically check out the safety of the neighborhood, quality of schools and distance to shopping, restaurants and work. Now you can add another item to that checklist: the local air quality.

When considering a move to a new city, air quality should be one of your top considerations, because the quality of the air you breathe can impact your health.

Sometimes, you can judge air quality fairly easily. If the home is located near an expressway, or an industrial park with several manufacturing facilities or a landfill, you can be assured that from time to time, weather conditions may contribute to poor air quality around the home.

However, measuring air quality isn’t always so simple. Often, you may not see anything nearby that could undermine the air quality of the neighborhood. However, in this case, what you don’t see can still hurt you.

To get an accurate measurement of the air quality in the area you’re planning to move to, check out a web site called AIRNow.gov. Simply enter your zip code and state, and it will give you a real-time measurement of the air quality index (AQI) specific to that area. The AQI tells you how clean or polluted your air is, and what associated health effects might be a concern for you.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculates the AQI for five major air pollutants as regulated by the Clean Air Act:

1. ground-level ozone
2. particle pollution (also known as particulate matter)
3. carbon monoxide
4. sulfur dioxide
5. nitrogen dioxide

For each of these pollutants, the EPA has established national air quality standards to protect public health. Ground-level ozone and airborne particles are the two pollutants that pose the greatest threat to human health in this country.

AQIs range on a scale of 0 to 500; the higher the number for your region, the more pollutants are in the air that can harm you. The EPA considers AQI numbers below 100 to be satisfactory.

To make checking air quality over the long term more convenient, you can even sign up for EnviroFlash, which will email you updates for your region.

Air Care Tips

• Conserve energy: drive less and use less electricity.
• Carpool, use public transportation, bike or walk whenever possible.
• Keep your car, boat, lawnmower and other engines tuned and maintained.
• Keep tires properly inflated and wheels aligned.
• Never burn your trash. This is illegal and releases toxic chemicals.
• Avoid burning leaves and brush, which is sometimes legal but always pollutes the air.