Ambient air quality?

Question

is there a difference between ambient air and, well, regular air quality? could you explain it?

Answer 1

Ambient air is the general air around us, essentially ambient air quality indicates a baseline of pollutants currently in an area.  It's useful since you can go downwind of a pollutant source and measure the difference between the ambient air quality and the air quality just downwind.  That gives you a good estimate of the amount of pollutants coming from a point source.

Answer 2

That's more or less what it means.

The EPA has standards for ambient air quality which controls pollution for outdoor air.

Most air purifiers refer to ambient air also, meaning the air in the room to be filtered. The same with heating and A/C so generally it means the environment someone or something is in. In this case, the room you put an air filter in is surrounded by ambient air. Room temp and ambient temp are interchangeable.

Hope this helps.