by Nearly 40% of people in the United States live in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution and the country is backsliding on clean air progress as the effects of climate change increase, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
The organisation’s report – its 25th annual analysis of the country’s “State of the Air” – found that 131 million people lived in areas with no healthy air pollution between 2020 and 2022. The figure rose by almost 12 million from last survey a year ago.
The report also found that people in the United States experienced more “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality days than at any time in the survey’s history.
Katherine Pruitt, the senior national director of clean air policy at the American Lung Association, said that climate change has been accelerating for years because of cleanup efforts made through the Clean Air Act, a federal law that was passed in 1963 to regulate air pollution and set air quality standards. .
“The changes that are happening in our climate and with heat and drought, and especially wildfire, have reversed some of that progress that we’ve made,” Pruitt said. “It’s distressing to know that so many people are living with air quality that puts their health at risk.”
Wildfires are a rapidly growing source of pollution that policymakers are struggling to address. Climate scientists expect wildfire smoke to increase in the future, as greenhouse gas emissions push temperatures higher. The lung association’s analysis comes to the same conclusion as peer-reviewed research published last year in the journal Nature. Marshall Burke, the author of that study, suggested that about 25% of the Clean Air Act’s progress has been undone by wildfire smoke.
“If we take a few steps back and tell what the root cause is, it’s the burning of fossil fuels,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, a clinical associate professor who practices as a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “We don’t need to be in this situation. We have the technology, we have the federal investment in renewable energy. What we need now is the political will.”
Each year, the “State of the Air” report analyzes air quality data from the previous three years. The analysis focuses on ozone exposure and short-term and year-round exposures to particulate pollution. The report issues grades for each measure and then summarizes how many areas pass or fail each grade. Almost 44 million people now live in areas that fail all three criteria, according to the report.
Small particles are of significant concern because they can enter people’s lungs, circulate in the bloodstream and affect other organs.
These particles, which are only a fraction of the size of a human hair, have been shown to increase the risk of asthma, lung cancer, chronic lung disease, premature birth and pregnancy loss.
Patel, who is also executive director of the Medical Association’s Consortium on Climate and Health, said she noticed an increase in premature births during periods of severe wildfire and began advising parents about how heat and smoke is a risk factor during pregnancy. .
“When we have weeks of poor air quality, we see more pregnant people coming in and delivering before 37 weeks,” Patel said, adding that parents often question whether their actions could contribute to a birth early “When they ask about risks to premature birth, I say climate change. Both heat and wildfires are a risk factor. They are not in your control.”
In addition, Patel said she has noticed that patients in her pediatric clinic often complain of nasal infections, eye irritation and asthma exacerbations, among other ailments, when wildfire smoke events occur in California.
Pruitt said concerns about particle pollution were once focused on the industrial Midwest and Northeast. But in this report, for the first time, all of the 25 cities with the most daily particle pollution were in the West. Most were in California.
“Early in our history, there was a lot of particulate pollution coming from coal-fired power plants and transportation sources and industrial processes,” Pruitt said. “As the Clean Air Act has cleaned up those sources, particle pollution problems in the eastern US have become much less severe. But in the West, of course, they’ve had the same access to regulations and cleanups, but they’re also struggling with climate change and wildfire.”
Daniel Mendoza, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, said many communities in western states are dealing with acute, short-term pollution episodes rather than chronic exposures over a long period of time. Scientists are still trying to determine how harmful wildfire events are compared to increased exposure from industrial sources.
“Not all bad air pollution is created equal,” Mendoza said.
Pollution from transportation and industrial sources could continue to decrease if the Environmental Protection Agency is able to implement the stricter standards it has proposed. The EPA proposed a rule last year that would require nearly all coal and large gas plants in the country to reduce or capture about 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2038.
This March, the agency implemented stricter rules to reduce tailpipe emissions from passenger vehicles. A challenge in the United States Supreme Court is another EPA policy, aimed at curbing nitrogen oxide pollution that flows across states. In 2022, the Supreme Court limited the administration’s ability to use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
There is one bright spot in the report: Ozone pollution has improved significantly. About 2.4 million fewer people live in areas with unhealthy ozone pollution compared to last year.
Wildfire smoke has worsened over time since this analysis was completed: Americans inhaled more wildfire smoke in 2023 than any other year on record, Stanford researchers found last year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
