Editor's note: The story has been updated to reflect that the 2024 State of the Air report will encompass data from 2020, 2021 and 2022.
For the past 24 years, the American Lung Association (ALA) a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing lung disease through education, advocacy, and research, has been issuing a highly publicized national report, “The State of the Air.” The report is based on the data and science that the Environmental Protection Agency is required to use to set the air quality standards.
The ALA’s most recent annual report covers the period of 2019 to 2021 and its three-year weighted average of collected data earns counties and metro areas nationwide a passing or failing grade.
In this report, Bucks County has consistently received an ‘F’ grade for the ozone content in its air, while neighboring Montgomery County received a passing ‘C’ grade. The only other ‘F’ ranking in the state of Pennsylvania came from Philadelphia County.
“This is simply a general public health information report, not a legal document,” explained Kevin Stewart, ALA Director of Environmental Health Advocacy and Public Policy. “We are framing this information with letter grades rather than in more confusing government language so the public can better understand and gain perspective.”
Laura Kate Bender, National Assistant Vice President, Healthy Air at the American Lung Association added, “This is not a commentary on our local air monitoring agencies. Writing this report is a long process of determination. We reach out to state air agencies with our data, and I’ll admit some states are not happy with it. However, we are grading the air not the monitoring agencies.”
While the ALA stresses the levels of ozone in Bucks County have been trending dramatically downward since their report was first issued in 1998, ongoing pollution levels have eaten into deeper change.
“Since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created fifteen years ago, we have seen dramatic success nationwide in the reduction of ozone levels and particulate matter,” Bender said. “However, the two caveats we constantly face are simply too much pollution still being produced and that worsening climate change is rapidly undoing much of the progress we have made.”
A major difference between the two agencies reporting is that the ALA works from pure, unadulterated data, while the EPA takes extraordinary events, such as the recent Canadian wildfires, into consideration when monitoring and reporting.
“The lungs don’t care about what is causing dangerous air conditions, they simply react to the quality of the air they take in, and that is what we record and report,” stated Stewart. “I think too often we view these events as unavoidable accidents. Rather, it is human causation — much of it from climate change — that is exacerbating the risks of what we breathe.”
Since 2000, the ALA has put a scale in place determining that 10 or more days with high ozone readings equals a failing grade. In this three-year period, Bucks County had 17 ozone readings of “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
It seems odd that neighboring Montgomery County, with its large metro Philadelphia border, received a passing ‘C’ grade. Stewart explained why. He said there are three ozone monitors in Montgomery County to Bucks County’s one, although these specific locations are EPA-approved.
“The real issue here stems from what we call the ‘wind rose’ — the direction the prevailing winds are coming from and how frequently they blow in a set direction,” stated Stewart.
The wind flow from ‘F’-rated Philadelphia much of the time tends to move from the city toward the Bristol air monitor, situated in the southeast corner of Bucks County. The two air monitors in Montgomery County, by contrast, are upwind of Philadelphia, meaning the city makes less of an impact on their air quality readings.
Counties and metro areas do not need to take proactive corrective action based upon the ALA reports. They are meant as a public service to paint a picture of what Americans are breathing in. The EPA is the official federal system in place to determine if and when more strident actions need to be taken.
“The general consensus remains since the EPA was founded, that we have been moving in the right direction,” says Stewart. “But none of us can ignore rapidly rising temperatures, from which ozone tends to form and thrive. Fine particulate matter concerns are rising as well and, as we’ve learned from recent events, the real threat of trans-border air pollution is also growing.”
The next State of the Air report will be issued in 2024, covering the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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