Editorial Standards & Corrections

DailyAQI exists to give people fast, honest air-quality information they can act on, and that only works if you can trust what you read. These are the standards we hold ourselves to — how we source data, how we compute the numbers, how we handle mistakes, and where the limits of our figures lie. We publish them openly because a service that asks for your trust should be transparent about how it earns it.

Where our data comes from

For India, our readings come from the Central Pollution Control Board's continuous monitoring network, published through the Government of India's open-data portal (data.gov.in) under the Government Open Data License – India, which permits reuse with attribution. For cities elsewhere, we use public monitoring stations aggregated by OpenAQ. We do not scrape unofficial sources or blend in unverified sensors, and we compute the Air Quality Index ourselves from raw pollutant concentrations using the official CPCB method for India and the US EPA method internationally, exactly as described in our methodology.

Accuracy and honesty

Our central rule is that we never invent, estimate or back-fill a reading and present it as a measurement. If a city has no fresh station data, its page says "data updating" rather than showing a stale or guessed number. We apply basic sanity checks and discard impossible or negative values before they reach a page, and we exclude carbon monoxide from the Indian AQI because the open feed reports it in units we cannot reconcile with the official breakpoints — a transparent gap in preference to an unverifiable figure. We would always rather show less and be right than show more and be wrong.

Transparency about coverage

Air monitoring is imperfect, and we think a site should be open about the state of its own data rather than papering over the gaps. That is why we show timestamps and station counts on city reports, and why the live health of the network — how many cities and stations are reporting at any moment — is published on our data-health page. When coverage drops, you can see it. This openness is not a disclaimer buried in the footer; it is a working part of the site.

How we handle health information

The health guidance on this site follows the published CPCB and US EPA category descriptions and widely accepted references such as WHO guidelines, using them to explain what each AQI band means and what precautions are sensible. It is always general information, never personalised medical advice, and never a substitute for a professional consultation or an official advisory. On health topics we say so plainly, and we point readers who have specific conditions to their own doctor and to official public-health guidance.

Corrections

We treat errors seriously because accuracy matters more to us than appearing complete. If you spot a mislabelled city, a wrong coordinate, an implausible reading or a factual slip in our reference content, tell us and we will investigate and fix it promptly, noting material corrections where appropriate. Reader reports genuinely improve the site, and we would rather hear about a problem and correct it than leave it standing. A correction is not an embarrassment; it is the system working.

Independence

DailyAQI is an independent information service. We are not affiliated with the CPCB, OpenAQ, the US EPA or any government body, and nothing we publish is endorsed by them. We do not accept payment to alter, inflate or suppress a reading, and our figures are driven by the data and the method, not by any outside interest. Where the site is supported by advertising to remain free, that support never influences the numbers or the health guidance.

How we use automation responsibly

Keeping hundreds of cities current every hour depends on automation, and we are open about it. Software fetches official data, validates it, computes the AQI with the published methods and refreshes the pages on a schedule. What automation does not do is fabricate facts: the numbers are computed from real measurements, not generated, and where explanatory or reference content is produced with tooling it is written to be factual, grounded in CPCB and WHO guidance, and free of invented statistics, with human oversight of what gets published. The technology keeps the data fresh; our standards govern what we are willing to put in front of you. To understand the wider project and who we are, see our about page.

Key takeaways

• Data comes from official sources — CPCB via data.gov.in and OpenAQ — computed with the official methods.
• We never invent, estimate or back-fill readings; "data updating" appears instead, and we exclude CO transparently.
• Coverage, timestamps and station counts are shown openly, including on the data-health page.
• Health guidance follows CPCB/US EPA/WHO and is general information, not medical advice.
• We are independent, correct errors when found, and use automation without ever fabricating facts.