Breathing a little easier?
Annual report: Air quality in region better but not good enough
Air quality in the Pittsburgh region is much improved but still ranks among the worst in the nation, according to the American Lung Association’s 22nd annual “State of the Air” report.
The 2021 report, for the first time, also focuses on the disproportionate health and environmental impacts air pollution has on disadvantaged communities and people of color.
The report, released Wednesday, analyzes U.S. Environmental Protection air data from 2017-19 for 229 metropolitan areas and found the Pittsburgh region ranked ninth worst for annual fine particle pollution, and 16th worst for short-term spikes.
Ground-level ozone, the prime component for unhealthy smog, improved to its best level ever in the 12county Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton metro area, the report said, but still earned an “F” grade and ranked 35th worst in the U.S.
The report is based on three years of monitoring data. The 2019 air readings were the most up-to-date quality-assured data available. Last year’s ALA report for 2016-18 ranked the Pittsburgh region eighth worst for annual fine particles or soot, and 30th worst for ozone pollution.
Kevin Stewart, ALA director of environmental health, acknowledged the Pittsburgh region’s improved pollution levels and rankings, but said the area’s air isn’t good enough, even though the most recent monitoring data from 2020 shows the region meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ambient air quality standards.
“Over the three years covered by our report, there were dozens of days when the air pollution levels were high enough to harm health and trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks
and stroke, placing children, older adults, and people living with chronic lung and heart disease at particular risk,” Mr. Stewart said about the air in the Tri-State region.
He said ozone and particle pollution can both be deadly, and exposure to fine airborne particulates is linked to worse health outcomes from COVID-19, including more deaths.
According to the report, during the 2017-19 period more than 40% of the U.S. population, or 135 million people, still breathe unhealthy air, including 2.5 million in the Pittsburgh region.
Mr. Stewart said more must be done to protect the health of people at risk, including infants, the elderly, those with pre-existing respiratory diseases and minorities more likely to live near pollution sources.
He said 20.7 million people live in the 13 U.S. counties that earned failing grades for annual and short-term soot and ozone pollution, and 14 million of those are people of color.
The report also shows that people of color were 61% more likely than whites to live in a county that failed all three air quality grades. It also found that climate change worsens air quality.
“As the nation works to address climate change and continue reducing air pollution,” he said, “we must prioritize the health of disproportionately burdened communities.”
To that end, the ALA is circulating a petition urging the Biden administration to promote clean air, a safe climate and environmental justice.
Pittsburgh Works Together, a business, industry and labor association formed in March 2020 to promote the regional economy, issued a pre-emptive rebuttal to the ALA report on April 12, criticizing the lung association’s methodology, the timeliness of the data used and its negative conclusions about the Pittsburgh region’s air quality.
“The Lung Association uses the data from air monitors in Allegheny County to pass judgment on the entire region,” according to that Pittsburgh Works research brief. “It justifies its decision to grade an entire region by the lowest possible scores because, the ALA says, people move around a region and so does bad air. But the ALA’s own data shows that there was never enough bad air in the outlying counties to cause concern.”
Where the ALA handed the region failing air quality grades, Pittsburgh Works, in a February report claiming the region’s air quality problems were overstated, said the air in the Tri-State area was similar to other urban areas and deserved a “C+.”
The Allegheny County Health Department, which regulates air pollution in the county and has also been critical of the ALA’s regionwide report card, announced in January that 2020 emissions were much reduced, and the county, for the first time, would attain federal air quality standards for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, ozone and both fine and coarse airborne particles — or soot — at all eight of its monitors.
Jim Kelly, ACHD deputy director of environmental health, said the department is working to improve air quality in all areas of the county, and earlier this week launched a new air quality dashboard to provide the public with easy access to neighborhood level air quality monitoring data.
“While we have made great strides with our efforts to improve air quality, we also understand that work remains, particularly in the Mon Valley,” Mr. Kelly said in an email response to questions. “We are pushing forward with new regulations as well as new enforcement initiatives. As such, the ACHD will continue to be aggressive with enforcement, transparent with our data and innovative with our policies.”
Mr. Kelly said the ALA reports are based on dated data and rely solely on the Liberty air monitor, which has the highest readings for annual fine particles in the county and is heavily influenced by emissions from U.S. Steel Corp.’s Clairton Coke Works.
Mr. Stewart said meeting federal pollution limits, while a move in the right direction, doesn’t mean pollutants are at levels that are not harmful to public health.
“Although the Pittsburgh area is currently designated by EPA as ‘in attainment’ of the ozone standard, it is important to recognize that this is a legal determination, but not equivalent to a finding that the air is healthy to breathe every day everywhere,” Mr. Stewart said. “This is the most important reason why the American Lung Association, though it evaluates the same data, does not use the same methodology in its report to determine grades as the EPA does to determine attainment.”