Chicago aims to have most air pollution monitors in the U.S.

City officials are scrambling to install nearly 300 high-quality air pollution sensors across Chicago, a network that would be the largest in the U.S. and one of the biggest worldwide.

The plan is to have the monitors up by the end of summer as city officials try to get a handle on the poor air quality that severely affects polluted Far South Side, Southwest Side and West Side neighborhoods.

The sensors will not be used to enforce pollution violations, however. Their use is intended to help shape city planning and practices around industrial development, planning, zoning and land use and establish public health safeguards to mitigate the pollution.

“This is going to be a very big network of air monitors — more than any place in the nation,” said Myrna Salgado-Romo, who has helped advise