Nearly 40% of people in the U.S. 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 – the 25th annual analysis of the country’s ‘State of the Air’ – shows that between 2020 and 2022, 131 million people lived in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. This figure has risen by almost 12 million since the 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 ever before in the history of the survey.
Katherine Pruitt, the national senior director for clean air policy at the American Lung Association, said climate change is putting an end to decades of cleanup efforts made through the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1963 to regulate air pollution and establish air quality standards. .
“The changes that are happening in our climate and with heat and drought, and especially wildfires, are starting to undo some of the progress we’ve made,” Pruitt said. “It is distressing to see that so many people live with air quality that threatens their health.”
Wildfires are a fast-growing source of pollution that policymakers are finding difficult to tackle. Climate scientists expect wildfire smoke to increase in the future as greenhouse gas emissions cause temperatures to rise. The lung association’s analysis reaches the same conclusion as peer-reviewed research published last year in the journal Nature. Marshall Burke, an author of that study, suggested that wildfire smoke has undone about 25% of the Clean Air Act’s progress.
“If we take a few steps back and identify what the root cause is, it is the burning of fossil fuels,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, clinical associate professor and pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “We don’t have to be in this situation. We have the technology, we have the federal investments to use renewable energy sources. What we need now is the political will.”
Every year, the ‘State of the Air’ report analyzes air quality data from the three previous years. The analysis focuses on ozone exposure and short-term and year-round exposure to particulate pollution. The report provides grades for each measure and then summarizes how many areas pass or fail on each grade. According to the report, almost 44 million people now live in areas that do not meet all three criteria.
Small particles are a big problem because they can penetrate people’s lungs, circulate in the bloodstream and affect other organs.
These particles, which are just 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 Society Consortium on Climate and Health, said she has noticed an increase in premature births during periods of severe wildfire and has begun counseling parents about how heat and smoke are a risk factor during pregnancy. .
“When we have weeks of poor air quality, we see more pregnant people coming in and giving birth before the 37th week,” Patel said, adding that parents often wonder if their actions could have contributed to an early birth. “When they ask about the risks of premature birth, I indeed say climate change. Both heat and forest fires are a risk factor. You can’t control them.”
Additionally, Patel said she has noticed that patients at her pediatric clinic often complain of nasal infections, eye irritation and asthmatic exacerbations, among other conditions, when smoke events occur in California.
Pruitt said concerns about particulate pollution once focused on the industrial Midwest and Northeast. But this report, for the first time, included all 25 cities with the most daily particulate pollution in the West. Most were in California.
“Early in our history, there was a lot of particulate pollution from coal-fired power plants, transportation sources and industrial processes,” Pruitt said. “Now that the Clean Air Act has cleaned up these sources, particulate pollution problems in the eastern US have become much less severe. But in the West, of course, they have had the same access to regulations and cleanups, but they are also baffled by climate change and wildfires.”
Daniel Mendoza, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, said many communities in Western states experience acute, short-term pollution episodes rather than chronic exposure over a long period of time. Scientists are still trying to untangle how harmful wildfires are compared to long-term exposure to industrial sources.
“Not all bad air pollution is created equal,” Mendoza said.
Pollution from transportation and industrial sources could continue to decline if the Environmental Protection Agency is able to implement the stricter standards it has proposed. The EPA last year proposed a rule that would require nearly all of the nation’s coal and large gas plants to reduce or capture about 90% of their carbon emissions by 2038.
In March, the agency introduced stricter rules to reduce tailpipe emissions from passenger vehicles. Another EPA policy, aimed at reducing nitrogen oxide pollution traveling through states, was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2022, the Supreme Court limited the government’s ability to use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The report has one bright spot: ozone pollution has improved dramatically. Compared to last year, about 2.4 million fewer people live in areas with unhealthy ozone pollution.
Wildfire smoke has worsened since this analysis was completed: Americans inhaled more wildfire smoke in 2023 than any other year on record, the Stanford researchers found last year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com