LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Air quality in the Louisville metropolitan area is getting worse, according to a new report.
The American Lung Association released its annual State of the Air report Wednesday. The Louisville metro area was ranked the 39th-worst in the United States for ozone pollution and 64th-worst for short-term particle pollution.
Both rankings are worse than last year.
“In the 25 years that the American Lung Association has been doing our ‘State of the Air’ report, we have seen incredible improvement in the nation’s air quality. Unfortunately, more than 131 million people still live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, and Louisville still has work to do,” said Shannon Baker, advocacy director for the Lung Association. “Climate change is making air pollution more likely to form and more difficult to clean up, so there are actions we can and must take to improve air quality, including calling on EPA to set long-overdue stronger national limits on ozone pollution.”
Ozone "smog" is the air pollutant that affects the largest number of people in the U.S. Louisville's ranking of the 39th-worst was based on the worst county in the area in terms of pollution, Jefferson County, and the number of "unhealthy" days per year.
In the last three years, Jefferson County experienced an average of five, up from 3.7 in last year's report. The county was given an F grade.
The report also tracked short-term spikes in particle pollution, which the American Lung Association says can be dangerous or even deadly. Louisville's ranking was based on Jefferson County's number of unhealthy days, which was 1.7 over the last three years, good enough for a C grade. This was an increase from 1.3 unhealthy days.
Jefferson County received an F grade for pollution levels above the federal standard recently updated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. However Louisville moved off the list of the 25 most polluted metro areas.
According to the report, 131 million people in the country live in an area that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. 43.9 million people live in areas with failing grades for all three measures.
The report covers the last three years. People in the U.S. experienced the highest number of days in that span when particle pollution reached "very unhealthy" or "hazardous" levels in the history of State of the Air report.
Communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air and are more likely to be living with one or more chronic condition.
Both ozone and particle pollution can cause premature death and other serious health effects such as asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, preterm births and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also cause lung cancer.
The EPA recently implemented new air pollution rules that aim to address particle pollution and climate change.
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