Breathe Easy LA

Building 3D-Printed Air Purifiers to make clean indoor air more accessible, affordable, and community-powered across Los Angeles.

Breathe Easy LA is a community-led clean air initiative expanding access to healthier indoor air for Southern California families affected by wildfire smoke and ongoing pollution. We bring together local engineers, makers, volunteers, educators, and community organizations to build and distribute free, locally produced air purifiers while helping residents prepare for poor air-quality events.

Our initial goal is to produce and distribute 500 community-built air purifiers across Los Angeles and surrounding communities. Our approach centers on three goals: Build affordable purifiers through local 3D printing and volunteer assembly; Distribute them through trusted community partners to households facing barriers to clean-air technology; and Prepare residents with practical information and resources for wildfire smoke and air pollution.

What makes Breathe Easy LA different is that the infrastructure stays local. Community makerspaces build purifiers using accessible designs that can be repaired, reprinted, and maintained locally. If a component breaks, the goal is to return it to the community network that built it rather than replace the entire device. This creates lasting local knowledge, repair capacity, and ownership.

This matters because exposure to air pollution, and access to protection, is deeply unequal. Families near freeways, warehouses, and industrial corridors often face greater exposure while commercial purification systems can remain financially out of reach.

The first 500 purifiers are a starting point toward a replicable, community-powered clean-air response network capable of mobilizing quickly during future air-quality emergencies.