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NYC Is Among Smoggiest Cities In Nation, Report Says
While the city ranks well for particle pollution, its ozone levels are bad.
By Adam Nichols, Patch Staff
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There was some good news: when researchers looked at particle pollution, which comes from sources including wildfires, wood-burning devices, coal plants and diesel engines — New York City's air was clean. Every county got a grade A.
But the poor marks came for ozone pollution, or smog. Ozone is produced when pollutants react to sunlight. "Increased heat in 2017 likely drove this increase in ozone," the report said.
"Warmer temperatures stimulate the reactions in the atmosphere that cause ozone to form, and 2017 saw the second warmest temperatures on record in the United States," the report says. "All three years covered in this report rank as the three warmest years ever recorded."
Harold Wimmer, the group's president and CEO, said that after years of progress, there's clear evidence of a "disturbing trend," with many Americans seeing their air quality worsening due to wildfires and weather patterns. Climate change is fueling that trend, he said.
"This increase in unhealthy air is eye-opening, and points to the reality that the nation must do more to protect the public from serious, even life-threatening harm," Wimmer said in a news release. "There is no clearer sign that we are facing new challenges than air pollution levels that have broken records tracked for the past twenty years, and the fact that we had more days than ever before when monitored air quality reached hazardous levels for anyone to breathe."
The American Lung Association, whose work involves improving lung health and preventing lung disease, looked at ozone and particle pollution, often called soot, in its 20th annual "State of the Air" report. Nationwide, more than 141 million people lived in areas last year with unsafe levels of the two, the report found. That's an increase of more than 7 million from 2017.
The report said each county had several Orange days, which means the air quality was bad enough to be deemed unhealthy to people with sensitive health conditions.
The report looked at three years of data on the two most widespread outdoor air pollutants from 2015-17, which were the warmest years in recorded history.
For the study, researchers with the Lung Association measured particle pollution in both short- and long-term intervals. Short-term refers to daily spikes that can prove deadly, while long-term refers to yearly average.
California, which has been devastated by wildfires in recent years, is home to four of the 10 cities most polluted by short-term particle pollution, and six of the 10 most polluted year-round. Furthermore, the Golden State is home to seven of the 10 most ozone-polluted cities.
Ozone pollution, often called smog, is unhealthy and essentially leaves a sunburn on the lungs, the report said. Breathing in ozone can leave people suffering from shortness of breath and cause bouts of coughing, asthma attacks and even early death.
Los Angeles remained the city with the worst ozone for the 19th time in the report's 20-year history. Here are the 10 places most polluted by ozone:
- Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
- Visalia, CA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA
- Sacramento-Roseville, CA
- San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
- Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
- San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA
- Houston-The Woodlands, TX
- New York-Newark, NY–NJ-CT-PA
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