According to the American Lung Association’s annual AIR report, approximately 46% of the population, and approximately 46% of the population, live with unsafe levels of ozone, particulate contamination, or both.
Plans by the Trump administration to loosen environmental regulations and cut funding for air quality research will exacerbate the problem, the report said.
“The biggest thing that saved patients’ lives regarding lung health and overall health is the clean air method,” said Panagis Galliatzatos, a pulmonary scientist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a spokesman for the Lung Association. “Obviously, it’s something that determines the air quality you breathe, so there’s a need for the law.”
This report analyzed ozone and particle contamination levels between 2021 and 2023. This is a period that includes the worst wildfire season recorded in Canada. This report was ranked from best to worst counties and cities using a scale from F to A.
Air quality in the United States has generally improved since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, with major pollutants falling by nearly 80%. However, millions of Americans breathe polluted air every day, leading to both acute and chronic health conditions that increase the risk of early death in some cases.
At least 156.1 million people live with the atmosphere that has achieved the worst grade of F with at least one contaminant, and at least 42 million live in counties that have failed all three contaminant standards. Of the 885 counties with air quality monitoring data, 480 counties broke down at least one of three measures.
The Biden administration aimed to improve air quality using measurements such as stricter rules such as vehicle emissions and mercury and carbon emissions from power plants. The Trump administration is working to reverse these regulations.
President Donald Trump has also directed the government to increase coal mining and use, including an executive order this month.
“We’re reducing unnecessary regulations targeting beautiful, clean coal,” Trump said when the order was signed. “I’m also directing Secretary Wright to use billions of dollars of federal funds to invest in next-generation coal technology,” he added, referring to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The revival of coal power plants will increase particulate pollution and carbon emissions, as well as toxic components such as mercury.
The report also found that people of color are more than twice as likely to live in communities with high ozone and particulate contamination compared to white people. Hispanic communities are three times more likely to be exposed to air with at least one poor air quality measurement.
Regan Patterson, an environmental engineer and environmental justice researcher at UCLA, said the findings were not surprising. But documenting the ongoing disparities among people exposed to air pollution is important to motivate policy changes, she said.
“We have a clean air policy and they have led to improvements,” Patterson said. “It is important to see if these reduced or eliminated air quality exposure disparities.
Overall, there has been an increase in exposure to Americans to both ozone and particulate contamination. Over 125 million people live in the county with unhealthy levels of ozone, an increase of 24.6 million from the previous report covering 2020-22. According to the author, “The severity of the problem and sudden change are unprecedented.”
93 counties failed to measure ozone more than in the previous report, and 10 counties swayed from A to F.
Canada’s wildfires have driven much of that change. Smoke moved south and east, while ozone burdens shifted to the plains of the Midwest and eastern US.
The hot, dry weather that promoted the fires in Canada last year was extraordinary when compared to historical records, but climate predictions suggest that such conditions will become common in the 2050s if the world continues its current global warming trajectory.
Like in the past few years, California has had the largest metropolitan area of ​​high ozone pollution levels, but Chicago, New York and St. Louis have joined the list of the most ozone-contaminated cities.
For particle contaminations below 2.5 microns, called PM2.5, the report analyzed both daily and annual contamination levels. Daily reports capture short-term changes, including a surge in wildfire smoke pollution, but annual levels reflect more sustained levels of exposure.
Daily PM2.5 exposures have affected at least 77 million people, the largest population affected in the last 16 years, and are a huge increase due to Canada’s wildfires. Approximately 85 million people live in the county and do not meet the EPA standards for annual exposure to PM2.5.
Only two cities have qualified for Clean Air this year in the report for Bangor, Maine and San Juan, Puerto Rico. These cities were ranked in the 25 cities with the lowest annual PM2.5 levels without very high days of ozone or PM2.5 pollution.
The report aims to create a complete picture of the air quality across the country, but there are limitations to the data. Approximately two-thirds of US counties lack air quality monitoring for ozone or particulate pollution. A survey released Tuesday in the minutes of the National Academy of Sciences found that 50 million people, or more than 15% of the US population, live in locations without reliable air quality monitoring.
Nelson Roke, a researcher of environmental health at Penn State University and the lead author of the study, said:
