131 million in U.S. live in areas with unhealthy pollution levels, lung association finds
Nearly 40% of people in the U.S. are living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution and the country is backsliding on clean air progress as the effects of climate change intensify, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
Nearly 40% of people in the U.S. are living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution and the country is backsliding on clean air progress as the effects of climate change intensify, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
The organization’s report — its 25th annual analysis of the “State of the Air” in the country — found that between 2020 and 2022, 131 million people were living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. The figure increased by nearly 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 any time in the survey’s history.
Katherine Pruitt, the national senior director for clean air policy at the American Lung Association, said climate change is chipping away at decades of cleanup efforts made through the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1963 to regulate air pollution and set air quality standards.
“The changes happening in our climate and with heat and drought, and especially wildfire, have started to undo some of that progress we’ve made,” Pruitt said. “It is distressing to find that so many people are living with air quality that threatens their health.”
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