Where Are the Cities With the Worst Air Quality in the U.S.?
Los Angeles, California Shutterstock
A new report from the American Lung Association notes that while pollution has decreased in recent decades, millions of people are still breathing dirty air.
California cities led the nation across several poor air quality metrics during recent years, according to a new report released Wednesday.
Cities in the Golden State claimed the top four spots in three different categories in the “Most Polluted Cities” section of the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2016 report. Those categories included ozone levels, as well as year-round and short-term particle pollution.
The report looked at air quality levels from 2012 to 2014.
Ozone is sometimes also called “smog” and comes from sources such as vehicle exhaust and power plants smokestacks. Particle pollution is mixed with these types of emissions as well.
Breathing air sullied with these contaminants can put people at higher risk of premature death and health problems, according to the American Lung Association, and has been associated with ailments ranging from asthma attacks to strokes.
California’s air quality challenges are not entirely unique.
“More than half of all Americans—166 million people—live in counties where they are exposed to unhealthful levels of these pollutants,” the report notes.
On the upside, of the 25 cities with the worst pollution, the majority saw air quality improvements compared to the findings in last year’s report. And, overall, air pollution emissions have gone down steadily in the U.S. since the 1970s, following the enactment of the Clean Air Act.
The list of the 25 cities with the most ozone-polluted air includes 20 places in the West and Southwest. Along with California, cities on that list and located in those regions, are in Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Oklahoma. The report attributes improvements in air quality rankings in eastern U.S. cities to reductions in power plant and vehicle emissions.
As in all but one of the 16 State of the Air reports, Los Angeles checked in as the city with the nastiest ozone pollution in the country. But its air quality was also the best recorded in the reports so far. Bakersfield, California, which is about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, had the worst short-term and year-round particle pollution.
People wanting to breath some of the freshest air the nation has to offer might visit Burlington and South Burlington, Vermont; Elmira and Corning, New York; Honolulu; or Salinas, California.
These cities were consistently ranked as having higher quality air, according to the findings of the report.
A full copy of State of the Air 2016 can be found here.
Bill Lucia is a Reporter at Government Executive's Route Fifty.
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