Pittsburgh has overtaken Los Angeles as the most polluted city in the US
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Pittsburgh and Los Angeles
the most polluted US cities
A report by the American Lung Association
4 May 2008: Pittsburgh has replaced Los Angeles as the most polluted city in the US. The Pennsylvanian city with a population of some 335,000 heads the list of cities most polluted by short-term levels of particle pollution, a deadly cocktail of ash, soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols that can spike dangerously for hours to weeks on end. This type of air pollution can trigger serious problems such as breathing, asthma and heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and even early death. Pittsburgh also ranks second on the list of cities with the most year-round particle pollution while Los Angeles again claims the first spot this year.
The American Lung Association issued its annual report on air pollution, ranking cities most affected by three types of pollution: short-term particle pollution, year-round particle pollution and ozone pollution. For the first time ever, a city outside California, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tops one of the most polluted lists in the ninth consecutive American Lung Association State of the Air report.
Los Angeles, despite being ranked a top two of the three most-polluted lists, saw continued improvements in air quality, dropping its year-round particle pollution levels by nearly one-third during the last decade, and saw solid improvement in levels of ozone or ‘smog’, a gas formed most often when sunlight reacts with vapours emitted when motor vehicles, factories, power plants and other sources burn fuel. Ozone irritates the respiratory tract and causes health problems like asthma attacks, coughing, wheezing, chest pain and even premature death.
“The air quality in several US cities has improved, but in others, declines in pollution have stalled. The trends tell us loud and clear that we need to do more to protect Americans from breathing air that’s simply hazardous to their health,” said Bernadette Toomey, President of the American Lung Association. “We applaud the aggressive efforts of Los Angeles to control particle pollution. It’s proof that making a commitment to clean up pays off.”
Several cities across America lost footing and slipped closer to the top of the list of most ozone-polluted cities, including San Diego, Atlanta, Charlotte and the Baltimore-Washington, DC metro area. Birmingham, Alabama, joined the list for the very first time, ranking at number 22 of most ozone-polluted cities, while the five worst cities on this list actually saw modest improvements. Fresno, California, for example, experienced a remarkable decline in the number of high ozone days since its peak in 2001-2003.
Key Findings of 2008 State of the Air report:
• One in 10 people in the US live in areas with unhealthy levels of all three types of pollution: ozone, short-term and year-round particle pollution.
• Two in five people in the US live in counties that have unhealthy levels of either ozone or particle pollution.
• Nearly one-third of the US population lives in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone.
• Over one quarter of the people in the US live in an area with unhealthy short-term levels of particle pollution.
• One in six people in the US live in an area with unhealthy year-round levels of particle pollution.
Top 10 most polluted US cities
(By short-term particle pollution)
1) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2) Los Angeles, California
3) Fresno/Madera, California
4) Bakersfield, California
5) Birmingham, Alabama
6) Logan, Utah
7) Salt Lake City, Utah
8) Sacramento, California
9) Detroit, Michigan
10) Baltimore, Maryland / Washington, D.C.
Top 10 most polluted US cities
(By year-round particle pollution)
1) Los Angeles, California
2) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
3) Bakersfield, California
4) Birmingham, Alabama
5) Visalia/Porterville, California
6) Atlanta, Georgia
7) Cincinnati, Ohio
8) Fresno/Madera, California
9) Hanford/Corcoran, California
10) Detroit, Michigan
Top 10 most polluted US cities
(By ozone)
1) Los Angeles, California
2) Bakersfield, California
3) Visalia/Porterville, California
4) Houston, Texas
5) Fresno/Madera, California
6) Sacramento, California
7) Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
8) New York City/Newark, New Jersey
9) Baltimore, Maryland./Washington, DC
10) Baton Rouge, Louisiana
On most days Los Angeles is shrouded in smog and particles pollution
On other pages
Three locations in Russia are among the world’s 10 most polluted places
Chernobyl in the Ukraine, Linfen in China and Ranipet in India are among the ten most-polluted locations in the world, according to research carried out by the New York-based Blacksmith Institute. The top ten also includes three sites in Russia, one in Peru and one in Zambia. The biggest pollutants were heavy metals and long-lasting chemicals, say the authors of the research study. The World Bank estimates that 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world were in China.
The Blacksmith report describes the world’s ten worst-polluted places as killer communities. Richard Fuller, director of the Blacksmith Institute, said that a key criterion in the selection process was the nature of the pollutant. "The biggest culprits are heavy metals - such as lead, chromium and mercury - and long-lasting chemicals - such as the `Persistent Organic Pollutants' (POPs). That's because a particular concern of all these cases is the accumulating and long lasting burden building up in the environment and in the bodies of the people most directly affected," he explained. More