Nearly 40% of people in the United States live in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution, and the country is facing a decline in clean air 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 country’s “State of Weather,” found that between 2020 and 2022, 131 million people lived in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. That figure is up nearly 12 million since the last survey a year ago.
The report also found that people in the US are experiencing more days with “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality than at any other time in the survey’s history.
Katherine Pruitt, national senior director for clean air policy at the American Lung Association, said climate change is diminishing decades of cleanup efforts through the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1963 to regulate air pollution and set air quality standards. .
“Changes in our climate with heat and drought, especially wildfires, are starting to undo some of the progress we have made,” Pruitt said. “It’s sad to see so many people living with air quality that threatens their health.”
Wildfires are a rapidly growing source of pollution that policymakers are trying to address. Climate scientists expect wildfire smoke to increase in the future as greenhouse gas emissions push temperatures even higher. The lung association’s analysis reaches the same conclusion as peer-reviewed research published last year in the journal Nature. Marshall Burke, the author of that study, suggested that wildfire smoke undoes about 25% of the progress of the Clean Air Act.
Dr., a clinical associate professor who works as a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. “If we take a few steps back and say what the root cause is, it’s the burning of fossil fuels,” Lisa Patel said. “We don’t need to be in this situation. We have the technology and federal investment to achieve renewable energy sources. What we need now is political will.”
Each year, the “State of the Air” report analyzes air quality data from the previous three years. The analysis focuses on short-term and year-round exposure to ozone and particle pollution. The report gives grades for each measure and then summarizes how many areas passed or failed for each grade. According to the report, approximately 44 million people currently live in areas that do not meet all three criteria.
Small particles are a significant concern because they can penetrate people’s lungs, travel through the bloodstream, and affect other organs.
These particles, which are the size of a tiny fraction of a human hair, have been shown to increase the risk of asthma, lung cancer, chronic lung diseases, premature birth and pregnancy loss.
Patel, who is also executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, said she noticed an increase in preterm births during peak bushfire periods and began counseling parents about how heat and smoke are risk factors during pregnancy. .
“When we have weeks of poor air quality, we see more pregnant people coming in and giving birth before 37 weeks,” Patel said, adding that parents often question whether their actions are contributing to premature birth. “When they ask about the risks of premature birth, I say climate change. Both heat and wildfires are a risk factor. They are not under your control.”
Additionally, Patel said he noticed that when wildfire smoke events occurred in California, patients at his pediatric clinic frequently complained of nasal infections, eye irritation and asthma flare-ups, among other ailments.
Particle pollution concerns were once concentrated in the industrial Midwest and Northeast, Pruitt said. However, for the first time in this report, all 25 cities with the highest daily particle pollution were in the West. Most were in California.
“Early in our history, there was a lot of particle pollution coming from coal-fired power plants, transportation sources and industrial processes,” Pruitt said. “As the Clean Air Act cleaned up these sources, particle pollution problems in the eastern United States became much less serious. But in the West, of course, they have the same access to regulation and cleanliness, but they are also overwhelmed by climate change and wildfires.”
Daniel Mendoza, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, said many communities in western states are dealing with acute, short-term pollution events rather than chronic exposures over a long period of time. Scientists are still trying to figure out how damaging wildfire events are compared to long-term exposure from 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 can implement the stricter standards it recommends. 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 dioxide emissions by 2038.
This March, the agency implemented stricter rules to reduce passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions. Another EPA policy aimed at preventing nitrogen oxide pollution circulating between states has been challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2022, the Supreme Court limited the administration’s authority to use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The report has one bright spot: Ozone pollution continues to improve dramatically. About 2.4 million fewer people live in areas with unhealthy ozone pollution compared to last year.
Wildfire smoke has gotten worse in the time since this analysis was completed: Stanford researchers found last year that Americans are breathing in more wildfire smoke in 2023 than in any other year on record.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.