Sacramento, much of California receive failing grades in State of the Air report
SACRAMENTO — Sacramento, and much of California, received unfavorable grades in this year's State of the Air report from the American Lung Association (ALA).
The organization released its 25th annual report on Wednesday, which grades how often certain areas have unhealthy ozone pollution (smog) days, unhealthy particle pollution (soot) days and/or unhealthy annual particle pollution levels. The report covers the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2020-2022.
It found that 9 out of 10 Californians live in an area that earned a failing grade in at least one of those categories. Even more concerning, more than 8 out of 10 Californians live in an area that fails all three categories.
When looking at the most-polluted metropolitan areas in the country, the Sacramento-Roseville area ranked 7th in high ozone days, 7th in year-round particle pollution and 9th in short-term particle pollution. Sacramento County didn't crack the top 25 for high ozone days, but it ranked 18th for short-term particle pollution and was tied at 24th for year-round particle pollution among U.S. counties. Placer County, which is where Roseville is, ranked 9th in ozone, tied at 18th with Sacramento for short-term, and didn't crack the top 25 for year-round.
California dominated the top 10 for each list, with the Los Angeles area ranking first for ozone for the 24th time since the report's inception in 2000, and Bakersfield topping each of the other two lists. Los Angeles and Bakersfield were in the same positions in the 2023 report.
The ALA says that despite decades of progress to create cleaner air nationwide, 4 out of 10 people, or 39% of Americans, live in places with unhealthy air quality. The report also found that more than half of the people of color in the country live in a place that fails one of the graded categories, and people of color were 2.3 times more likely to live in a U.S. county that failed all three categories.
The metropolitan areas deemed the cleanest to live in were Bangor, Maine; Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, Tennesse-Virginia; Lincoln-Beatrice, Nebraska; Urban Honolulu, Hawaii; and Wilmington, North Carolina. Each of those areas in this year's report had zero days high in ozone and particle pollution and ranked among the 26 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels.
The full State of the Air report can be found on the American Lung Association website.
