When air quality in your area reaches unhealthy levels, we'll send you a quick alert, along with expert tips on how to reduce your exposure.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) measures how polluted the air is and how it may affect your health.
0–50 (Good): Air quality is satisfactory.
51–100 (Moderate): Acceptable, but some pollutants may pose minor concerns.
101–150 (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups)
151–200 (Unhealthy)
201–300 (Very Unhealthy)
301+ (Hazardous)
Still okay for most, but if you have asthma or allergies, take it easy and avoid long outdoor workouts.
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By Michelle Wan, Brand Manager & Air Quality Writer | Reviewed by David Clark, Licensed HVAC Technician | Published: September 1, 2026 | Updated: September 1, 2026
Hampton sits on a peninsula with water on three sides, and that geography does most of the work on your air. The Chesapeake Bay lies off Buckroe, the harbor runs past Phoebus and Fort Monroe, and the Back River wraps the north end near Langley. Breezes off all three usually keep things clean, though on the stillest afternoons they carry ozone back over the neighborhoods.
Filterbuy has manufactured filters in the U.S. for over a decade, so we think a lot about what outdoor air carries into a home. This tracker exists so you can act on a real number.
I read Hampton’s numbers most days. The reading at 8 a.m. tells you almost nothing about 3 p.m. The peninsula scrubs the air overnight, so mornings look terrific, and ozone builds while you’re at work. If you check once, check in the afternoon.
Michelle Wan, Brand Manager & Air Quality Writer, Filterbuy
The map below shows Hampton's air quality index right now, drawn from official EPA and Virginia DEQ monitors. It gives you the current AQI number, its color category, and the pollutant behind it. Hampton air pollution today is almost always ground-level ozone or fine particles (PM2.5), the soot-sized specks that reach deep into the lungs.
Buckroe will not always match Phoebus on the harbor, so zoom to the nearest monitor or look up air quality by ZIP code. Crossing the water? Check Newport News or Virginia Beach air quality.
The Air Quality Index turns pollutant concentrations into a single number from 0 to 500, paired with a color. The higher the number, the greater the health concern. For the full breakdown, we cover what the Air Quality Index measures and the formula behind it in how the AQI is calculated.
Categories follow the U.S. EPA Air Quality Index scale.
AQI 100 is Filterbuy's action line. That is our call, not an EPA category change: 100 is still the top of Moderate on EPA's scale. Four steps:
1. Fit a MERV 13 if your system runs a lower tier. EPA recommends MERV 13 for the very small particles in wildfire smoke.
2. Set the thermostat fan to On. On Auto it only filters while heating or cooling.
3. Add a portable HEPA cleaner in each occupied room, bedrooms first. EPA sizing is a smoke CADR of at least two-thirds the room area, so a 300 sq ft bedroom wants about 200. Skip anything that makes ozone.
4. Close the house up, and hold off on candles, frying, and vacuuming while smoke is in.
No ductwork? In an apartment or a home on window units, portable HEPA cleaners are the main defense, not a supplement.
During smoke, check the filter and change it when it looks dark brown or black. That can come well before the normal interval, so keep spares on hand.
Sources: EPA, DIY air cleaners and wildfire smoke · EPA, Preparing for Smoke and Heat
Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality treats Hampton Roads as one of its five forecast regions, issuing Action Day alerts when pollution is expected to climb. Ground-level ozone is the local standout. It forms when sunlight cooks vehicle and industrial emissions on hot, still afternoons, which is why the state's ozone season runs April to September.
Source: Virginia DEQ Current Air Quality and Forecast
Hampton also sits at the mouth of one of Virginia's worst traffic bottlenecks. The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel corridor carries more than 100,000 vehicles a day at peak season, and the $3.9 billion expansion rebuilding it is the largest highway project in state history. That idling traffic concentrates the nitrogen oxides ozone needs.
Source: VDOT HRBT Expansion Project
Fine particles behave differently. Hampton's geography disperses them, which keeps PM2.5 low for most of the year. The exception is smoke, and you can read how Canadian wildfire smoke reaches the Mid-Atlantic.
Source: Aguilera et al., Nature Communications (2021)
Most pages discuss bad air days in the abstract. Here is a real one:
1. Thursday, July 16. DEQ issued a Code Orange alert for Hampton Roads and Richmond for ozone. Unhealthy for sensitive groups.
2. Friday, July 17. It escalated to Code Red, with wildfire smoke across the region. Unhealthy for everyone.
3. Saturday, July 18. DEQ downgraded to Code Yellow as conditions cleared.
Three days, three categories.
For scale, Virginia DEQ logged statewide ozone exceedances on only two days in all of 2026, June 5 and July 17. One falls inside the week above.
Sources: Virginia DEQ ozone exceedances · NWS Wakefield · WAVY air quality alert coverage
Hampton is home to NASA's Langley Research Center, which houses the TEMPO project team and the data center that archives its readings. TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) sits in geostationary orbit roughly 22,000 miles up, scanning North American air pollution every daylight hour, fine enough to resolve individual neighborhoods. NASA extended the mission in 2026. The hourly picture of pollution over a continent gets processed a few miles from Buckroe Beach, which gives this city good reason to take a reading seriously.
Source: NASA, TEMPO at Langley
Bad air gets treated as one problem. In Hampton it is two, and they need different answers.
Most of Hampton's bad-air days are ozone days, and we would rather say so than sell you a filter for the wrong pollutant. Activated carbon is the only widely available medium that adsorbs ozone; our air purifier vs. HVAC filter guide compares the options.
The mistake I see most in coastal homes is a filter picked once for dust and never reconsidered. Hampton runs its AC hard for months, and humidity loads a filter faster than people expect. And a MERV 13 only helps if the frame seals. A filter a half inch too small lets air travel around it, and around the filter is where the fine particles go.
David Clark, Licensed HVAC Technician, Technical Reviewer for This Page
1. Hampton's metro is moving in two directions at once.
Ozone: 143rd worst in the nation, a slip from 149th.
Particle pollution: 148th worst, up from 152nd.
Both still hold a B grade.
Source: American Lung Association, State of the Air 2026: Virginia
2. Unhealthy air reaches the people least able to absorb it. Nationally, 2.4 million children and 11.9 million adults with asthma live in counties graded F on a pollutant, along with 6.7 million people with COPD.
Source: American Lung Association, Populations at Risk
3. Most of your exposure happens indoors.
Americans spend roughly 90% of their time indoors.
Some indoor pollutants run 2 to 5 times higher than outdoors.
Source: U.S. EPA, Indoor Air Quality
A: Use the live map near the top of this page. Readings move through the day, so check again in the afternoon if you looked in the morning.
A: Usually not. Hampton posts Good or Moderate readings on most days. The exceptions are summer ozone Action Days and the occasional smoke event, and the live map tells you which kind of day you are having.
A: The live map reports today's fine particle pollution (PM2.5) alongside the AQI, and our PM10 vs PM2.5 guide explains the difference. Coastal breezes keep it low most of the time, though smoke can raise it sharply for a day or two.
A: MERV 13. That is the tier we recommend whenever fine particles are the problem, and EPA recommends MERV 13 for the very small particles in wildfire smoke. Before you order, measure your filter size so it seals without bypass, and check which MERV rating fits your home.
A: That depends on which kind of day it is. On a smoke day, follow the four steps above. On an ozone day, filtration is not the lever, so stay inside and ease off exertion.
You can't change the weather over the peninsula, but you can control the air inside your home. Filterbuy builds American-made filters in 600+ sizes, shipped free and factory-direct on a schedule you set. Find MERV 13 air filters in your size, and keep a spare on the shelf.
