An annual report card from the American Lung Association gives the air quality in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington area an “F” grade for smog and says soot also worsened.
The ALA’s “2023 State of the Air” report, released Wednesday, ranks the D.C. metro area as the 26th most-polluted U.S. city for smog — ground-level ozone air pollution — from 2019 to 2021. That’s worse than last year’s report, which ranked the metro area as the 30th worst in the nation.
The report card also notes that the “metro area’s air quality worsened for 24-hour and year-round particle pollution,” adding more unhealthy air days with high levels of fine particle pollution. The D.C. metro area ranks the 62nd worst for daily soot levels, slightly worse than its 63rd-place ranking last year.
ALA Advocacy Director Aleks Casper said children, older adults, pregnant women and chronic disease sufferers are most at risk from dirty air.
“That’s why we are calling on lawmakers at the local, state and federal levels to take action to ensure that everyone has clean air to breathe,” Ms. Casper said.
The ALA said it is “calling on President Biden to urgently move forward on … new pollution limits on ozone and particle pollution and new measures to clean up power plants and vehicles.”
The annual report card, which uses Environmental Protection Agency data to track and grade Americans’ exposure to unhealthy air pollution during three-year periods, found that year-round particle pollution levels remained close to last year’s all-time best for the metro area.
The area ranked 79th worst for year-round particle pollution, slightly improved from 75th worst in last year’s report. The ALA said the D.C. area improved only because other cities did worse, noting that year-round pollution levels in the nation’s capital “were very slightly higher” than last year.
This year’s report found Baltimore County is now the worst-polluted in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington area, displacing Marylyand’s Harford County for the worst ozone pollution in this year’s report. Baltimore, Harford, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties, all in Maryland, all earned “F” grades.
The most-polluted U.S. cities for smog, year-round soot and daily soot are in California. Los Angeles-Long Beach is the worst for ozone pollution, while Bakersfield is the worst for year-round particle and short-term particle pollution.
The report said nearly 120 million Americans, or more than 1 in 3, live in counties with unhealthy air. More than 64 million of them, or 54%, are people of color.
“In fact, people of color were 64% more likely than White people to live in a county with a failing grade for at least one measure, and 3.7 times as likely to live in a county with a failing grade for all three measures,” the ALA said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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