131 million in U.S. live in areas with unhealthy pollution levels, lung association finds

The report also found that people in the United States experienced more “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality days than any time in the survey’s history.

Nearly 40% of people in the U.S. are living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution and the country is backsliding on clean air progress as the effects of climate change intensify, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.

The organization’s report — its 25th annual analysis of the “State of the Air” in the country — found that between 2020 and 2022, 131 million people were living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. The figure increased by nearly 12 million since the last survey a year ago.

The report also found that people in the United States experienced more “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality days than any time in the survey’s history.

Katherine Pruitt, the national senior director for clean air policy at the American Lung Association, said climate change is chipping away at decades of cleanup efforts made through the Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1963 to regulate air pollution and set air quality standards.

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Wildfires are a fast-growing pollution source that policymakers are struggling to address. Climate scientists expect wildfire smoke to increase in the future, as greenhouse gas emissions push temperatures higher. The lung association’s analysis comes to the same conclusion as peer-reviewed research published last year in the journal Nature. Marshall Burke, an author of that study, suggested that wildfire smoke has undone about 25% of the Clean Air Act’s progress.