Nearly half of children in the United States live in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Lung Association.
This equates to 33.5 million children (46 percent of the country’s children) living in areas that fail on at least one measure of air pollution, which is particularly harmful to lung development.
The report also found that people of color are more than twice as likely as white people to live in neighborhoods that fail on all three metrics. Latinos are more than three times as likely to live in such communities, unchanged from last year’s report.
Since 2000, ALA’s annual State of the Air Report has detailed the nation’s improved air quality over the decades since the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970. But in recent years, heat and wildfires exacerbated by climate change are reversing some of that progress.
Last year’s report, which covered 2021 to 2023, showed air pollution worsened during a particularly tough period, including two severe wildfire seasons. Wednesday’s report looked at air quality from 2022 to 2024 and showed that while the number of people living in highly polluted areas has declined from the previous period, it remains well above the lowest levels in the past decade. And heat-induced ozone pollution worsened for the second year in a row.
ALA’s Will Barrett said the important thing is that millions of Americans are at risk.
“Progress is fragile,” said Barrett, the group’s assistant vice president for national clean air policy. “We still have much work to do to ensure that every child in America grows up breathing healthy air.”
Air pollution poses serious health risks. Years of research have linked it to asthma, heart disease, dementia, cancer, and low birth weight. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 7 million people die each year.
Children have smaller lungs and breathe more quickly than adults, making them especially susceptible to health effects because they ingest more pollutants relative to their body size.
The new ALA report analyzes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air monitoring data for three years through 2024, so it does not yet reflect the impact of President Donald Trump’s actions. But his administration has aggressively targeted clean air protections to benefit polluting industries.
Since last January, the Trump administration has rolled back air quality standards, eliminated hazard certifications that allow the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate health threats, and granted broad pollution exemptions to industrial facilities and power plants. It is also reinvesting in coal.
Each can pose health risks, experts warn. ALA is calling on the public to put pressure on the EPA to change course.
“They ignore the costs of air pollution and discount the value of children’s health,” Barrett said. “We will begin to see the devastating effects of those decisions in the coming years.”
An EPA spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the agency continues to regulate air pollution, and protection of human health and the environment remains its central goal.
The agency wrote that ALA “receives significant funding from left-wing foundations” and that it is “grossly irresponsible” to “spread lies” that the federal government is allowing pollution to go unchecked.
ALA’s supporters include large corporations such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and PayPal, as well as private foundations such as the CVS Health Foundation. Since President Trump returned to office, the EPA has frequently claimed that critics of its policies are radical leftists.
“We prove every day that we can protect our environment and grow our economy, and we will not stop in our mission to ensure that every American is healthier and breathes cleaner, fresher air than ever before,” the agency wrote.
sound the alarm against pollution
ALA considers three measures of air pollution. One is ground-level ozone (often referred to as smog), and the other is a measure of daily and annual particulate pollution, both of which are harmful. The group found that 152 million people, or 44 percent of the U.S. population, live in areas that fail on at least one of these metrics.
This is about 4 million fewer people than reported last year. However, this is still 20 million more people than reported in 2024.
Approximately 62 million people live in counties that fail short-term particulate pollution. This is 15.6 million fewer people than last year’s report, ending seven consecutive years of increases. Still, this number is much higher than the historic low of 35 million in 2018.
What is ground-level ozone?
Ground-level ozone is a pollutant created when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds interact with sunlight, creating “smog” that makes breathing difficult and more dangerous. This is different from stratospheric ozone (the good kind), which occurs naturally in the upper atmosphere and helps cool the Earth’s surface by protecting it from the sun’s rays.
Automobiles, power plants, oil production, and other industrial sources are sources of the bad kind of ozone. Meanwhile, anthropogenic emissions are contributing to dangerous global warming that erodes good ozone and further increases smog.
And just like last year, smoke from wildfires, driven in part by climate change, remains a significant source of this pollution.
Meanwhile, the smog worsened. More than 129 million people live in counties that fail because of ground-level ozone pollution, an increase of 4 million from last year’s report. The report says regions in the Southwest and Midwest are most affected by ozone deterioration, likely due to climate-related heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
Because ozone pollution can cause severe inflammation, doctors often describe the effects of ozone pollution as “sunburn on the lungs.” Shortness of breath, cough, asthma, bronchitis, and even early death can occur.
Mary Wagner lives with her two sons in Las Vegas, one of the fastest warming cities in the country. Her oldest, 15, has had asthma since childhood. He says his attacks get worse when heat waves or wildfire smoke blows in from California.
Wagner, the Nevada field organizer for Mama’s Clean Air Force, is angry that the federal government is abandoning policies put in place to protect families like hers from dirty air.
“As citizens, we feel like they turned their backs on us,” she said.
Her son is one of approximately 4.7 million children living with asthma in the United States. About half, like him, live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one pollutant.
What is particle pollution?
Particulate matter pollution is a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets of varying sizes and can contain hundreds of different chemicals. Particle pollution less than 10 micrometers in diameter can even enter the human lungs and bloodstream, causing serious health problems.
The American Lung Association’s report focuses on the most dangerous form of particulate matter, PM 2.5, or very small respirable particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. That pollution can cause heart attacks, worsening asthma, reduced lung function and premature death.
More than 530,000 children and 2 million adults with asthma live in areas where all three of these measures are not met.
S. Christie Sadrimeri, a pediatric pulmonologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital and an ALA volunteer, said that for many children diagnosed with asthma, the condition can last a lifetime.
Sadrimeli said her patients and their families report asthma flare-ups on hot days and on days when wildfire smoke from Canada has brought unusually high air pollution to Baltimore and other parts of the East Coast in recent years.
She has started counseling patients to check air quality on hot days and be aware that symptoms can worsen. Poor air quality affects everyone’s health, but people who already have lung disease feel it more acutely, she said.
Liz Hurtado, senior manager of field engagement and partnerships for Mama’s Clean Air Force, has become increasingly aware of the effects of air on her four children. She now checks air quality apps before letting her children go outside to play.
“Those are things we shouldn’t do,” Hurtado said.
Hurtado also manages EcoMadres, the organization’s programs aimed at supporting and engaging the Latinx community. While she wasn’t surprised to see how disproportionately burdened Latinos were, the statistics were still “heartbreaking.”
Hurtado said the federal government’s immigration crackdown has made some communities she works reluctant to publicly advocate for the government to step up for clean air, adding to existing fears and mistrust. Still, she wants to inspire people to advocate for their health. She hopes the information in this report will be a galvanizing force.
“This report is a very powerful resource to inform our community and leverage those resources and statistics to take action,” Hurtado said. “We really look forward to this every year.”
Call for action on EPA rollback
Each year, ALA’s report is partially stalled by a lack of air monitoring in many parts of the country.
The group says more than 267 million people live in 885 counties across the country with sufficient monitoring to be included in the report. But most U.S. counties lack official monitors, leaving some 74 million people, mostly in rural areas, in the dark about the kind of air they’re breathing.
The report’s authors also warn that the boom in artificial intelligence is making clean air regulations even more urgent. Left unchecked, increased energy demand and diesel-powered backup generators for a rapidly growing network of data centers will result in even more dangerous pollution, especially for the communities closest to the facility.
The report’s authors argued that policies aimed at improving local air pollution are effective. Sacramento, California, one of the nation’s 25 most ozone-polluted metropolitan areas, recorded the lowest number of smog days in the report’s history for the second year in a row. Part of that is due to efforts to significantly manage local air quality, invest in zero-emission vehicles, and increase cleaner transportation options such as walking and cycling, Barrett said.
The Lung Association’s report includes a call to action to urge the EPA to change its policies on climate change and air pollution. Barrett said that instead of relaxing standards for cars and polluting industries or removing critical health-related data, government agencies should push to reduce emissions and prioritize the welfare of children.
“We are calling on everyone to tell EPA that the health of children matters,” he said.
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Keerthi Gopal
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Keerti Gopal covers the intersection between climate change, public health, and environmental justice for Inside Climate News. Previously, I covered climate change activism and repression of movements. She is a National Geographic Explorer and has received fellowships from Fulbright, Solutions Journalism Network, The Lever, and the National Press Foundation.
