Residents of just four American metropolitan areas have had regular access to healthy air in recent years. Those four places — Burlington-South Burlington, Vt.; Honolulu; Elmira-Corning, N.Y.; and Salinas, Calif. — had the pleasure of breathing air consistently free of unhealthy ozone, short-term particle and year-round particle pollution from 2012 to 2014,according to a new national air quality report card from the American Lung Association.
The air everywhere else was less consistently clean.
— Washington Post
Actually, air quality has significantly improved in American cities since the passing of the 1970 Clean Air Act and subsequent legislation. This year marked the lowest particle pollution levels in 16 years for all but four of the top 20 most-polluted cities.
Still, things remain pretty grim: more than half of Americans are breathing unhealthful levels of polluted air today.
Here are the most-polluted cities (by year-round particle pollution):
Here are some older articles about air quality issues in cities around the world:
2 Comments
Dang California.
I use to live in 1. Bakersfield, and moved to 7. Bay Area to breathe - but no place is as worse as NYC in August and its not even on the list -
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