Pittsburgh's Air Quality Among The Nation's Worst

PITTSBURGH, PA - Southwestern Pennsylvania has the worst air pollution in the country outside of California and the air quality here is worsening, a new American Lung Association study has determined.

The organization’s “State of the Air Report” released Wednesday not only gave the Pittsburgh area an F grade for air quality but ranked the region’s air as the seventh-worst in the nation.

"Residents of Pittsburgh and the metro area should be aware that we're breathing unhealthy air, driven by local emissions, upwind sources, and extreme heat as a result of climate change, placing our health and lives at risk," Kevin Stewart, the lung association’s director of Environmental Health for Advocacy and Public Policy, said in a statement.

The study found that Pittsburgh ranked:

• Twenty-eighth for high ozone days out of 227 metropolitan areas.
• Tenth for 24-hour particle pollution out of 201 metropolitan areas.
• Seventh for annual particle pollution out of 187 metropolitan areas.

Of Allegheny County’s 1.2 million residents, the lung association identified more than 500,000 people in pollution at-risk groups: 132,000 living in poverty, 103,000 with diabetes, 101,000 each with cardiovascular disease or adult asthma, 65,000 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 20,000 with pediatric asthma and nearly 800 with lung cancer.