Around 120 million people still live in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution in the United States. While the national air pollution levels are increasingly healthy, California and other Western states are seeing a rise in pollution, according to a report released Wednesday from the American Lung Association.
The ALA's 24th annual "State of the Air" report used data gathered by the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality System, which found that approximately 36% of people in the U.S. live in areas with toxic levels of air pollution. The EPA examined the air quality through ozone smog and particle pollution from 2019 to 2021 to rank cities and states, highlighting the discrepancies.
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Bakersfield, California, had the worst short-term and long-term particle pollution in the U.S. California metropolitan cities Los Angeles and Long Beach had the worst ozone pollution.
Kevin Stewart, director of Environmental Health at the American Lung Association, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that a lot of the data from the report were based on air pollution from forest fires, as wildfires on the West Coast have become larger and more destructive in recent years.
Stewart explains that there is a long-term improvement, looking back to when the Clean Air Act was established in 1963. This year's report shows a greater improvement in ozone smog, with fewer people this year living in unhealthy conditions than the past six years. However, the report indicates we are still nowhere near solving the air pollution problem.
“We do know that the fine particle pollution in this country, as measured on a daily basis, has more people living with grades of “F” in our report than in the past 10 reports,” Stewart told the Washington Examiner. “So, in that respect, fine particle pollution has been worsening and certainly associated some of that with wildfires, but at the same time, that doesn't explain everything.”
The study found that while the nation is seeing a general ozone pollution improvement, many communities are being disproportionately affected by unhealthy levels.
“Well, I certainly think there's more attention to be properly paid to the issue of environmental injustice where there are, historically, communities, especially people of color, people living in poverty, who are often living in close proximity to serious sources of air pollution, are more likely to live in areas where even the ambient air quality is poor,” Stewart said. “And so that means that we need to devote more attention to controlling air pollution in those areas.”
The American Lung Association outlined its recommendations for moving forward to clean up air pollution, pushing for action at every level.
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At an individual level, experts urge simple measures to reduce adding to air pollution, such as walking, biking, or using public transit over diesel or gasoline-powered vehicles. The organization said local governments can push for zero-emission operations, and that state, territorial, and tribal governments can benefit from the Clean Air Act, the main federal air quality law, to implement California zero-emissions standards for vehicles.
At a federal level, they state, “The U.S. Congress must pass funding bills that adequately invest in clean air protections, including increased funding for EPA to set and enforce these lifesaving rules and to pass along to state, local and Tribal air agencies to monitor and clean up harmful air pollution.”