New Air Quality Bill Mandates Real-Time Pollution Monitoring at 100+ Industrial Sites and Deploys 1,000 Community Sensors

The newly proposed Public Health Air Quality Act of 2025 is designed to fundamentally change how the EPA monitors hazardous air pollution, moving the needle from occasional checks to real-time, mandatory surveillance, especially in communities living next to major industrial sites.

This bill sets up a huge expansion of air monitoring across the country. It requires the EPA to establish a Health Emergency Air Toxics Monitoring Network—a fancy name for a program that will measure pollution coming from at least 100 stationary sources, like refineries and chemical plants, for a minimum of six years (Section 3). The data collected from these industrial fencelines must be posted publicly online within seven days of collection in an accessible, multi-language format. If you live or work near one of these facilities, this means you should finally get clear, timely data on what you're breathing.

The 'Fenceline' Rule: Mandatory Monitoring and Corrective Action

One of the biggest shifts in this legislation is the requirement for the EPA to issue new regulations within two years forcing major industrial polluters to install and maintain their own monitoring systems. This isn't just about collecting data; it’s about accountability. Facilities like petroleum refineries, chemical plants, and plastics manufacturers will have to implement continuous emissions monitoring and fenceline monitoring (Section 4).

Crucially, the EPA must set health-based "corrective action levels" for the top pollutants coming from these industries. Think of these as red lines. If the pollution measured at the property line crosses that level, the facility can’t just shrug. They must immediately conduct a root cause analysis, take full remedial action to fix the problem, and then publish a public report certifying that a Clean Air Act violation occurred. For the facility owners, this means significant new compliance costs for equipment installation, maintenance (monitoring systems must work 95% of the time), and the operational risk of mandatory shutdowns or fixes if they hit that red line.

Putting Monitors Where They Matter Most

The bill aggressively targets air quality monitoring in areas that have historically been overlooked. It requires the deployment of 80 new NCore multipollutant monitoring stations (Section 5). Unlike typical monitors, at least 40 of these must be sited in census tracts that have a high public health burden—meaning areas with higher-than-average rates of childhood asthma, cancer, or poverty. This is a direct effort to address environmental justice concerns by placing the highest-quality monitoring equipment in the most vulnerable neighborhoods.

In addition to these high-end stations, the bill mandates the deployment of at least 1,000 low-cost air quality systems (capped at $5,000 each) in communities disproportionately impacted by pollution (Section 6). These systems, which will measure pollutants like ozone and PM2.5, must be deployed in clusters of at least five per area. If the data from these low-cost community sensors shows that pollution levels are consistently nearing 98% of the national standard, the EPA must install the gold-standard Federal reference monitors within 180 days. This creates a clear, fast-track mechanism for communities to use low-cost data to force high-quality federal monitoring and enforcement.

What About PFAS and Reporting?

The legislation also tightens up the rules on what facilities must report. It requires the EPA to update its air emissions reporting rules to specifically include all emissions of hazardous air pollutants and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances)—the "forever chemicals" (Section 7). This new data requirement becomes effective for the first full inventory year after the EPA finalizes the rule, giving regulators and the public a much clearer picture of which facilities are emitting these highly problematic substances.