In case you’re unaware, the National Lung Association conducts the State of the Air report annually. The purpose of this report is to gain knowledge about the air we breathe so people can protect and improve their health. This is also a method of locating pollution so that clean air can be a focus in that area.
This year, the report shows that “…even with continued improvement, too many people in the United States live where the air is unhealthy for them to breathe.” Although the number of people exposed to air pollution dropped through 2013-2015 (the years tracked in this year’s report), there is still a large population ofpeople in America who still live in low air quality areas. Fortunately, quality is improving with findings that show “One-quarter fewer people now live where the air quality hit unhealthy levels in 2013-2015”.
Now you’d be right to think that pollution is high in large cities because results show that Los Angeles, California (the second-most populated city in America) has the worst ozone pollution levels in the nation. In addition to Los Angeles’ high pollution, Bakersfield (also in California) has the worst short-term particle pollution and Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California grabbed the number one spot as the most polluted city in year-round particle pollution for the first time in history.
Another positive is the report that the Clean Air Act has proven to increasingly improve the quality of the air even though the findings go on to claim that keeping our air clean will become increasingly challenging due to climate hange which brings on worsened air quality and extreme weather events.
The NLA (National Lung Assocation) also compiled a report of the cleanest U.S. Cities. They compiled this list by finding cities that “had zero high ozone or high particle pollution days, and were among the 25 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels.” That list included the following five cities (alphabetically):
- Burlington-South Burlington, VT
- Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples, FL
- Elmira-Corning, NY
- Honolulu, HI
- Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL
- Wilmington, NC
Now with that being stated, these cities were the only areas that met the three requirements. However, there were twenty-three other cities ranked among the cleanest for ozone and short-term particle pollution. Twenty-three other cities ranked among the cleanest for ozone and short-term particle pollution, eleven other cities ranked among the cleanest cities for both year-round and short-term levels of particle pollution, and two cities were ranked on both lists for ozone and year-round particle pollution levels. If you are curious about how your city ranked, you can search here.
If you’re asking yourself what you can do to improve the quality of the air around you, be encouraged and aware that you can use an air filter in your home to keep the air clean. Higher MERV-rated filters are more efficient at removing contaminants from your air. Shop at DiscountFilters.com where your product will have a one-year purchase guarantee so you can breathe easy!
