Privacy

Air Quality Watch collects as little as it can. This page describes what the site does today.

Effective November 13, 2026.

What the site collects

• The site has no accounts or sign-ups. The only form is the contact form, described below.
• The site counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which works without cookies; see Visit counts below.
• Our pages set no cookies. Cloudflare's security services, including the spam check on the contact page, may set a cookie to verify a visitor.
• We do not sell personal information.

What happens in your browser

• Theme choice. If you choose light or dark mode, the choice is saved in your browser's localStorage under the name aqw-theme and is never sent to the site. Choosing the system setting removes it.
• Your location. The map asks for your location only when you press “Use my location”. Your browser then shares it with the page, which uses it in your browser to move the map and find the nearest reporting area. The location is not sent to this site and is not added to the page address. Once the map moves there, your browser requests the map tiles for that area from the tile host (tiles.openfreemap.org), as it does for any area you view.
• Search. Place and ZIP code search run in your browser against files downloaded from this site. A ZIP code search downloads the file for the code's first three digits, so that request reaches the site's host like any other page request.

Visit counts

• What it measures. Cloudflare Web Analytics tells us how many people visit, which pages they view and how quickly pages load, so we can see what is useful and fix what is slow.
• How it works. Each page loads a small script from static.cloudflareinsights.com. When the page loads, it sends the page address, the address of the page that linked to it, browser and device type, and load-time measurements to cloudflareinsights.com. Like any request, that one carries your IP address.
• What it does not do. Cloudflare states that Web Analytics sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser and does not fingerprint visitors or follow them across sites. We see totals in our Cloudflare account and do not combine them with anything else. Cloudflare Web Analytics
• Opting out. Content blockers that block cloudflareinsights.com stop the script; every page works the same without it.

The contact form

• What you send. If you write to us, you send your name, your email address, the topic you choose, an optional subject and your message. We use them only to read and answer your message and to fix the site. We do not publish them, use them for marketing or add you to any list.
• Spam check. The contact page loads Cloudflare Turnstile from challenges.cloudflare.com. It looks at signals such as your IP address and browser details to tell people from automated programs. When you send, the site passes the check's result and your IP address to Cloudflare to confirm it. Cloudflare Turnstile privacy policy
• Delivery. The site hands your message to Resend, an email delivery service, which emails it to our inbox with your address set for our reply. Resend keeps its own copy under its policy. Resend privacy policy
• Sending limit. The form accepts 5 messages an hour from each connection. They are counted in a Cloudflare database under a hashed form of your IP address made with a secret key, never the address itself. Only messages that pass the spam check are counted. The counter leaves the active database within about two hours of your message, at the next five-minute clean-up; copies may remain in Cloudflare's database recovery history for up to 30 days.
• Storage. Your message is not saved in the site's database, which holds only those counts. Messages stay in our inbox until we delete them; to have one deleted or corrected, ask through the contact form.

Outside services

• Cloudflare hosts the site. Like any web host, it receives each request, including your IP address and browser details, to deliver the page and protect the site. Cloudflare stores the site's request and diagnostic logs in our Cloudflare account; they include request URLs, response information and related metadata, and Cloudflare keeps them for a limited period, after which they are deleted. Cloudflare privacy policy
• OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org) serves the street basemap under the interactive map. When a map is shown, your browser requests map tiles, styles and fonts from it directly, so OpenFreeMap receives your IP address and the map area being viewed. It uses no cookies, according to its privacy policy. OpenFreeMap privacy policy
• Cloudflare Web Analytics (static.cloudflareinsights.com and cloudflareinsights.com) counts visits on every page, as described under Visit counts.
• Cloudflare Turnstile (challenges.cloudflare.com) runs the spam check on the contact page only, as described above. No other page loads it.
• Resend delivers messages sent through the contact form to our inbox. Your browser does not contact Resend; the site's server sends the message. Resend privacy policy

Pages contact no other outside host. The visit-count hosts are contacted from every page, the map tile host from pages with a map, and challenges.cloudflare.com from the contact page only. Data from AirNow, the National Weather Service, EPA, state and local air agencies and the National Interagency Fire Center are collected by our servers, so your browser contacts those agencies only when you follow a link to their sites.

Changes

If the site's handling of information changes, this page will be updated first, with a new effective date.