Smog Gets In Your Eyes

By the millions, more and more Americans are breathing dirtier air, and larger U.S. cities such as Los Angeles and Atlanta remain among the worst for pollution, the American Lung Association said in a report Tuesday.

Los Angeles was the worst of 382 counties receiving failing grades when it came to ozone air pollution, or smog, a 15 percent leap from the 333 counties getting failing grades last year, the association said in its annual "State of the Air" report. The number of people living in areas with failing marks rose to 141 million from 132 million.

"We don't grade the efforts of the community. We just grade the air quality," said the association's Paul Billings, citing Los Angeles officials' efforts to improve the quality of their air against nature's hurdles.

The report grades and ranks counties on how often their air quality exceeds "unhealthful" categories of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index for smog. The lung association analyzed ozone data in areas where ozone monitors exist, covering 187 million of the total U.S. population of more than 281 million people.

The report reflects data from 1997-99. Last year's report focused on 1996-98.

The association based its grading system on a weighted average of each county's ozone data. The weighted average was calculated from the number of days each county experiences "orange days" (unhealthy for sensitive groups, such as people with asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema), "red days" (unhealthy) or "purple days" (very unhealthy) based on the EPA's air-quality index.

Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, California, remained the nation's smoggiest county, and Atlanta jumped to sixth-smoggiest from ninth.

Joining them in the association's 10 smoggiest metropolitan areas were: Baersfield-Fresno, California; Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, California; Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, Texas; Washington-Baltimore; Charlotte-Gastonia, North Carolina-Rock Hill, South Carolina; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Philadelphia-Wilmington, Delaware-Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Three cities fell off the Top 25 list — Modesto, California; Birmingham, Alabama; and St. Louis, Missouri — although the ALA hastened to say air quality in those three still failed its standards.

Five cities were added to the list: Richmond-Petersburg, Virginia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, North Carolina; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The areas with the cleanest air were given only in alphabetical order. They were Bellingham, Washington; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; Duluth, Minnesota; Fargo, North Dakota; Flagstaff, Arizona; Honolulu; Laredo, Texas; Lincoln, Nebraska; McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas; Salinas, California; and Spokane, Washington.

Those localities made the A list for a number of reasons, according to Billings.

"They benefit from good geography, small populations, favorable weather, and they also benefit from pollution control programs that have been implemented nationally," he said.

The association said levels of ozone, a highly reactive gas that is a form of oxygen, typically rise between May and October, when higher temperatures and more sunlight combine with stagnant atmospheric conditions.

"It's combination of more pollution and weather," Billings said. "Since we can't control the weather, we have to control the pollution. We need strong and strict enforcement of the Clean Air Act."

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