Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

48 | June 2022 pollution or ozone. This is 2.1 million more people breathing unhealthy air compared to last year's report. Nearly 9 million more people were impacted by daily spikes in deadly particle pol- lution than reported last year. In the three years covered by this report, Americans experienced more days of "very unhealthy" and "hazardous" air quality than ever before in the two-de- cade history of "State of the Air." More than 4 in 10 Americans live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution. The "State of the Air" report looks at two of the most widespread and dan- gerous air pollutants, fine particles, and ozone. The air quality data used in the report is collected at official mon- itoring sites across the United States by the federal, state, local and Tribal governments. The Lung Association calculates values reflecting the air pollution problem and assigns grades for daily and long-term measures of particle pollution and daily measures of ozone. Those values are also used to rank cities (metropolitan areas) and counties. This year's report presents data from 2018, 2019 and 2020, the most recent quality-assured nation- wide air pollution data publicly avail- able. See About This Report for more detail about the methodology for data collection and analysis. "State of the Air" 2022 is the 23 rd edition of this annual report, which was first published in 2000. From the beginning, the findings in "State of the Air" have reflected the successes of the Clean Air Act, as emissions from transportation, power plants and manufacturing have been reduced. In recent years, however, the findings of the report have added to the evidence that a changing climate is making it harder to protect human health. The three years covered by "State of the Air" 2022 ranked among the seven hottest years on record globally. Spikes in particle pollution and high ozone days related to wild- fires and extreme heat are putting millions more people at risk and add- ing challenges to the work that states and cities are doing across the nation to clean up air pollution. The combination of policy-driven reductions in emissions on the one hand and climate change-fueled in- creases in pollution on the other hand is resulting in a widening disparity between air quality in eastern and western states. Fifteen years ago, in the 2007 "State of the Air" report, 136 counties in 36 states got failing grades for spikes in particle pollution, includ- ing 31 counties in seven states west of the Rocky Mountains. In 2022, 96 counties in 15 states got failing grades for short-term particles, and 86 of them were in 11 western states. His- torically urban, industrialized eastern and midwestern states like New Jer- sey, New York, and Ohio, which in 2007 had 21 counties on the list be- tween them, are now getting passing grades. A similar story can be told for annual particle pollution. In 2007, 73 counties in 18 states got failing grades for annual particle pollution, and all but eight counties in California and one in Montana were east of the Rockies. In 2022, all the 21 counties that got a fail- ing grade for annual particle pollution were in five western states. People of color are 3.6 times more likely than white people to live in a county with 3 failing grades. Again, this year, "State of the Air" finds that the burden of living with unhealthy air is not shared equally. Close to 19.8 million people live in the 14 coun- ties that failed all three measures. Of those, 14.1 million are people of color. People of color were 61 percent more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade for at least one pollutant, and 3.6 times as likely to live in a county with failing grades for all three pollutants. In "State of the Air" 2022, Fresno, California displaced Fairbanks, Alas- ka as the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution and Bakersfield, California continued in the most-polluted slot for year-round parti- cle pollution for the third year in a row. Los Angeles remains the city with the worst ozone pollution in the nation, as it has for all, but one of the 23 years tracked by the "State of the Air" report." We need action at every level to clean up air pollution and address cli- mate change. MOMS Clean Air Force continued from previous page

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