Which States Have The Worst Air Quality?: American Lung Association Releases 2022 Report

Nearly 40% of all United States residents live in a part of the country with unhealthy levels of air pollution, an increase of 2.1 million total people, according to a recent report by the American Lung Association.

The report, released on Thursday, shows the impact of air pollution on the U.S. population from 2018-2020, found that 2.1 million more U.S. residents were breathing unhealthy air compared to the last report from 2017-2019. In addition, compared to the last report, nine million more people in the US were impacted by the most hazardous air quality days in the United States in the ALA’s 20-year history of putting out the report.

The report also cited inconsistencies in counties where residents were made up of different ethnic and minority groups.

“The report found that people of color were 61% more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade for at least one pollutant, and 3.6 times as likely to live in a county with a failing grade for all three pollutants,” Harold Wimmer, the National President and CEO of the ALA, noted in the report.

The report did note that while decades of work on the nation’s air quality has led to some improvement by the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, residents are still feeling negative impacts from hotter and drier conditions, rising temperatures and droughts.

Most recently, wildfires, especially those in the West, have had a high impact on air pollution spikes in several states. Wood-burning stoves, coal-fired power plants and diesel engines are also major sources.

California was ranked as the state feeling the worst effects, with the most counties ranked on the Most Polluted Places to Live list. 13 counties received failing grades across three metrics: Butte, Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Madera, Merced, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare.

Western, southwestern and Midwestern states were also most likely to be ranked as the most polluted places. The states of Arkansas, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Illinois all also had counties that ranked in the top 25 most polluted places.

Cleaner air seemed to be found mostly in Eastern and Southeastern regions of the country, with Maine, Vermont, Virginia, New York and North Carolina all having cities that were among the top 10 when it came to cleanest air quality. Hawaii was the only state in the west to rank on that list.

Some other areas also bucked the trend, with Lincoln-Beatrice Nebraska also ranking among the cleanest cities, while Fairfield County, Connecticut ranked number 20 within the top 25 counties with the worst ozone pollution.