by About 46% of US residents – 156 million people – lived in areas with unhealthy air quality that received the grades of the American Lung Association for ozone or particle pollution.
This corresponds to the 26th annual analysis of the air quality data of the association, which shows that the country uses clean air measures.
In the analysis in which the data from 2021 to 2023 was checked, around 25 million people with unhealthy air rose compared to the survey of last year.
The report shows how the effects of climate change – heat, drought and increased forest fire – are promoting changes in air quality throughout the country.
“This year we were really impressed by the great increase in the number of people in the whole country who lived with unhealthy air and how much was driven by the increase by worsening ozone,” said Katherine Pruitt, the national, senior director of clean air policy at American Lung Association, which was added that hot, sunny Weather “”.
In 2023, the last year of the analysis of the Lung Association, the global temperatures were the hottest so far. The temperatures in the United States were their fifth highest in the history of the country. (This record has already been exceeded: in 2024 the NASA scientists estimated that the earth was about 2.65 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.47 degrees Celsius, hotter than the historical average from 1850 to 1900.)
Pruitt, the senior author of the report, said her study shows that Ozone, also known as a smog, in places such as Texas, who dealt with a sizzling heat wave in 2023.
“In 2023, the ozone levels really shot in Texas,” said Pruitt. “They had a long magic of very hot weather every day.”
The temperatures in cities like Del Rio are over 100 degrees for more than two weeks this year.
Intensive forest fire smoke also contributed to the fact that so many regions received failed grades. In 2023, smoke spread from intensive Canadian forest fires in the population centers in the northeast, which caused the greatest smoke load per person in modern US history.
Increasing the forest fire smoke that creates small particles that penetrate the lungs and circulating into the bloodstream of humans is noticeable in the progress that have passed the Clean Air Act since the 1963 congress.
In 2023, Marshall Burke, Associate Professor at Stanford University, published a study in which it was found that an increase in the forest fire smoke had undo about 25% of the progress made as part of the Clean Air Act.
The reports of the Lung Association will show a similar turn in 2016.
“In about 2016 we see this trend the other way round,” said Pruitt. “The climate changes and increases the risk of these extreme weather conditions, which make breathing for millions of people in the United States until we get the emission sources under control that leads to worsening the environment and we will suffer the consequences.”
Lee Zeldin, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, described plans for an aggressive environmental regulations last month, and the agency plans to rethink some programs authorized by the Clean Air Act, including rules that set emission standards for vehicles and regulations of power plants.
The Lung Association report showed that Bakersfield, California, had the most dirty air in the country from 2021 to 2023. It took the short -term particle pollution first (when air reaches unhealthy “or” very unhealthy “values after the air quality index), in the year -round particle pollution and first of all in ozone pollution.
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
