Midstate inhales dirty air half the year, but Franklin County breathes easy
(Undated) — The air in southcentral Pennsylvania is consistently worse than the air in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.
When it comes to tiny soot particles, the Harrisburg-Carlisle metropolitan area makes the nation’s top-10 list of cities with the most days of particle pollution. The area joins the likes of Atlanta, Cleveland and San Bernardino.
A report by the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center found that some communities in southcentral Pennsylvania breathed poor air on nearly half the days of 2016. Poor air quality increases the risk of premature death, asthma attacks, heart problems and other health issues.
“There’s no safe level of exposure to smog and particulate pollution,” said Elizabeth Ridlington, policy analyst with Frontier Group and co-author of the report. “Even low levels of smog and particulate pollution are bad for health and can increase deaths.”
PennEnvironment, a non-profit environmental advocacy group, found in data from 2016:
- 132 days of either elevated smog or soot in Harrisburg-Carlisle.
- 128 days in the York-Hanover metro area.
- 177 days in Lebanon.
- 179 days, Pennsylvania’s highest, in Lancaster.
- 81 days in Gettysburg.
The region generally had far more bad air days from particle pollution than smog, according to the report Trouble in the Air.
Chambersburg-Waynesboro had one of the lowest scores for air pollution in Pennsylvania. The metro area had just 12 smoggy days, but particle pollution is not monitored for the county. The device that measures smog for the county also is located on South Mountain at Methodist Hill, far above Interstate 81 traffic.
Philadelphia had elevated air pollution on 111 days, Pittsburgh 121, Allentown 133 and Reading 144. The metro area of Hagerstown,Md., and Martinsburg, W.Va., had high levels of smog or particles on 95 days.
The findings come as the Trump administration is considering weaker clean car standards and reviewing the standards for ozone, a byproduct in smog. The authors of the report called for stronger vehicle pollution standards and stronger air pollution standards.
Researchers reviewed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records of air pollution levels across the country. The EPA measures ozone, a pollutant in smog created when chemicals from vehicle exhaust and industrial processes react in sunlight. The EPA also measures unseen particles created primarily from burning fossil fuels such as coal, gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas.
Trouble in the Air differs from the American Lung Association’s State of the Air annual reports. The Lung Association looks at days when communities face severe air quality issues.
Trouble in the Air instead used the moderate levels of air pollution that the World Health Organization considers to be hazardous to human health. The American Thoracic Society, the American Lung Association and other health associations support the WHO standard. The WHO recommends lower ozone and particulate pollution standards than does the EPA:
- An ozone pollution standard of up to 50 parts per billion over eight hours, compared to EPA’s 70ppb.
- A particulate limit of 25 micrograms per cubic meter over 24 hours, compared to EPA’s 35 ÃŽ¼g/m3.
Trouble in the Air took the highest reading of the day from monitors to determine pollution scores for metro areas.
According to the report, “even ‘moderate’ levels of air pollution can be harmful, particularly when people are exposed to them over a long period. A growing body of evidence suggests that current standards may not adequately account for the public health risks from air pollution.”
This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The Chambersburg Public Opinion.
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