air pollution

ALA: Air Pollution Is Still at Dangerous Levels

Ozone pollution in the United States had significantly worsened in 2014 to 2016, while year-round particle pollution had improved in 2014 to 2016, according to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2018 report.

The researchers came to these conclusions after analyzing data from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System. They aimed to characterize the hourly averaged ozone concentration information and the 24-hour averaged PM2.5 concentration information for the 3-year period (2014-2016) for each monitoring site.

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The current national ambient air quality standard for ozone is 70 ppb, measured over 8 hours.

Findings from the analysis include:

  • About 41% of Americans live in counties where the air is unhealthy.
  • The tools in the Clean Air Act have helped improve levels of ozone and particle pollution in much of the United States.
  • More than 7.7 million Americans live in 10 counties with unhealthy levels of ozone and short-term and year-round particle pollution—10.4 million Americans fewer than in the 2017 report.

The analysis also found that Los Angeles, California, is still the city with the worst ozone pollution; Fairbanks, Alaska, is the worst-polluted city for year-round particle pollution; and Bakersfield, California, is still the worst-polluted city for short-term particle pollution.

On the contrary, the top 3 cleanest cities for year-round particle pollution are Cheyenne, Wyoming; Urban Honolulu, Hawaii; and Casper, Wyoming.

To see where your city ranks on these lists, visit http://lung.org/sota.

“This year’s report provides continued evidence that the United States must continue to fight climate change and to support and enforce the Clean Air Act to protect the nation from unhealthy air,” the authors write.

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

  1. American Lung Association State of the Air 2018 [published online April 18, 2018]. American Lung Association. http://lung.org/sota. Accessed April 18, 2018.