Toxic air pollution levels in the US are at their worst levels in 25 years, causing health concerns for more than a third of Americans.
The American Lung Association (ALA) revealed in a new report that 39 percent of Americans live in regions with unhealthy air pollution levels.
To discern the elevated pollution levels, the ALA looked at the daily and annual averages of particulate and ozone pollution released by factories and refineries.
California was found to have six of the top ten cities ranked as having the worst air quality – and more than 33.2 million people live in that location.
The report cited climate change as the culprit, causing wildfires and droughts, but also pointed to combustion sources such as cars and manufacturing facilities.
The American Lung Association ranked the top cities suffering from the worst air quality in the US – affecting approximately 131 million Americans
Last year the US experienced its highest levels of air pollution in 25 years. According to the report, the cause is likely due to climate change, which is causing temperatures to rise and wildfires to spread. Pictured: Smog covered San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in 2020 due to ongoing wildfires
The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to place limits on the amount of emissions that can be produced in the US. Pictured: Climate activists protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, in 2022
Air pollution causes tens of thousands of deaths every year and short-term exposure can cause breathing problems such as asthma, but long-term exposure can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or lung cancer.
‘When we started ‘State of the Air’ in 2000, I never thought that in the 25th edition we would report that more than 100 million people still breathe unhealthy air. It is unacceptable,” said Paul Billings, ALA senior vice president of public policy.
The ALAs report showed that the problem is becoming increasingly serious despite efforts to step up efforts to clean up air pollution, with more than 131 million people living in hotspots of unhealthy particulate pollution by 2023 – 11.7 million more people than the previous year.
Particulate pollution consists of tiny particles that are individually too small to be visible, but when pollution levels are higher it can make the air look thick and hazy, known as smog.
People living in low-income areas are at greatest risk from particulate pollution due to their proximity to sources of pollution, such as industrial sites or mines.
The ALA used a rating system to define particulate pollution, ranking 112 counties in 19 US states with an ‘F’ for their daily particulate pollution, which affects 65 million people.
“There is no safe level of particulate pollution,” Dr. Kari Nadeau, the John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. USA TODAY.
“We weren’t supposed to breathe this in as humans.”
The amount of air pollution people are exposed to has skyrocketed over the past decade due to wildfires on the West Coast
Bakersfield, California was reported as the worst urban area for air pollution, followed by the areas of Visalia and Fresno, California.
About 2.6 million Californians currently suffer from adult asthma, a big jump from East Coast states like Massachusetts, where 660,000 people are diagnosed with the respiratory disease.
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that more than 18,000 Californians died from stroke, compared to 2,200 in Massachusetts.
Other affected areas include Fairbanks, Alaska, Phoenix and Springfield, Oregon, where more than five million people live.
The report marks the fifth consecutive year that air pollution levels have increased, even as the six National Ambient Air Quality Standards have fallen 78 percent since 1970, with the EPA attributing this to the amount of smog and wildfire smoke in the air.
Pollution in the US fell by about 40 percent between 1990 and 2020, but the improvements were mainly in East Coast states.
Meanwhile, the West Coast is being ravaged by some of the most dangerous and hazardous air quality days in history.
“The severity of the pollution is unprecedented,” said Katherine Pruitt, national policy director at the ALA NPR.
“We’ve pretty much discussed the easiest ways to reduce pollution,” she said. “So we have catalytic converters on our vehicles, we have particulate filters on our trucks, we have scrubbers on our power plants.”
Wildfires cause increasing levels of air pollution as the smoke spreads, causing major breathing problems for people and causing heart attack, stroke and lung cancer. Pictured: The 2020 Bobcat Fire spread in California’s Angeles National Forest
Smoke from forest fires can spread to neighboring states and cities, flooding the area with smog. Pictured: New York City in June 2023 after wildfires broke out in Canada, sending smoke south
“We’ve pretty much discussed the easiest ways to reduce pollution,” she said. “So we have catalytic converters on our vehicles, we have particulate filters on our trucks, we have scrubbers on our power plants.”
She confirmed that climate change has become the biggest problem, adding that this shows that we need to tackle both problems at the same time.
“It just really underlines that we have to do both things at the same time,” Anenberg told the outlet.
“We must reduce the carbon emissions that cause anthropogenic climate change, and we must continue to pursue strong regulations on air pollution emissions.”
Lawmakers’ back-and-forth response to tackling air pollution makes it difficult for the EPA to impose rules and appears poised to block a policy that would reduce the amount of air pollution moving from one state to another reduce – the so-called ‘Good Neighbor’. ‘ rule.
If implemented, the rule would place a limit on the amount of stack emissions that power plants and other industrial sources could produce in downwind areas, allowing them to be transferred to other states.
Still, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority was skeptical of the rule’s approval in February, calling it expensive and ineffective.
The proposed legislative efforts to reduce air pollution come after a decades-long battle to protect people from harmful smog.
In 1948, the ‘Donora Smog’ disaster stimulated the movement to take action against air pollution.
The Donora Smog killed 20 people when a temperature inversion – which traps cold air at low altitude with warmer air above – blew into Donora and Webster, Pennsylvania, causing major breathing problems for 6,000 of the 14,000 residents.
A sign on a storefront in Donora reads, “Clean Air Started Here,” as it was the start of a revolution and an ongoing battle to make the air safer to breathe.
Despite the large number of people affected, attempts to introduce air regulations in the 1950s failed, and it was not until the mid-1960s that then-President John F. Kennedy called for action.
“In light of the known damage caused by polluted air, both to our health and to our economy, it is imperative that greater emphasis is placed on air pollution control by communities, states and the federal government.” Kennedy said at the time.
But six decades later, Americans are still suffering from the highest levels of air pollution in 25 years.
“A lot of people right now feel like there’s not much they can do to address it or change it,” Sarah Sharpe, a Fresno resident and deputy executive director of the partnership, told USA TODAY.
“It’s just a condition that we either have to live in or we choose to live in.”