CBC: Six in 10 Americans — about 175 million people — are living in places where air pollution often reaches dangerous levels, despite progress in reducing particle pollution, the American Lung Associationsaid in a report released this week. The Los Angeles area had the nation's worst ozone pollution.
In California about 24 million people live in 18 counties with unhealthy levels of ozone, short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution, the report said, adding that new research shows the risk of health problems from pollution may be worse than once thought, especially for infants and children.
The California Air Resources Board has tripled its estimates of premature deaths in California from particle pollution to 18,000 a year, the report said. Stanich said those numbers were taken from 2008 documents and were in the process of being updated now. He said he expected new numbers in about a month.
Freeways remain high-risk areas for everyone, the study said, increasing the risk of heart attack, allergies, premature births and infant deaths.
The two biggest air pollution threats in the United States are ozone and particle pollution, the Lung Association said. Others include carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and a variety of toxic substances.
Recent improvements
The report is accurate but doesn't show how far California has come, said Dimitri Stanich, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.
The report is accurate but doesn't show how far California has come, said Dimitri Stanich, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.
"More than 45 per cent of the days in the 1990 ozone season were considered very unhealthy (in the South Coast area). Today, 45 per cent of the days are clean, more than double the number of clean days during 1990."
Worst offender
San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District in Fresno, which oversees the Bakersfield area.
"We are one of the dirtiest places in the nation, and we recognize that, but we are much cleaner than we used to be and we wish that side of the coin had been mentioned," she said. The report gave Bakersfield an "F" grade — again