Here's How NH Measures Up In Air Quality

More than 40 percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air, according to a new report published Wednesday by the American Lung Association, and that group includes more than half of New Hampshire residents.

Harold Wimmer, the ALA’s president and CEO, said that after years of progress on air quality, there’s clear evidence of a “disturbing trend” in the other direction, with many Americans seeing air quality worsening because of wildfires and weather patterns. Climate change is fueling that trend, he said.

“This increase in unhealthy air is eye-opening, and points to the reality that the nation must do more to protect the public from serious, even life-threatening harm,” Wimmer said in a news release. “There is no clearer sign that we are facing new challenges than air pollution levels that have broken records tracked for the past twenty years, and the fact that we had more days than ever before when monitored air quality reached hazardous levels for anyone to breathe."

The American Lung Association, whose work involves improving lung health and preventing lung disease, looked at ozone and particle pollution, or soot, in its 20th annual “State of the Air” report. Nationwide, the report found, more than 141 million people lived in areas last year with unsafe levels of one or both pollutants. That’s an increase of more than 7 million from 2017.

The report looked at three years of data from 2015 to 2017, which were the warmest years in recorded history, using letter grades as markers of air quality.

For ozone pollution, the state's two most populous counties — Hillsborough and Rockingham, with more than half of New Hampshire residents — got no better than a C grade. Merrimack and Cheshire counties earned Bs and two counties got As: Belknap and Grafton. (Data was unavailable or incomplete for Carroll, Strafford and Sullivan counties.)

The picture was much brighter, however, for particle pollution. Belknap, Grafton, Hillsborough and Rockingham counties all earned As and Cheshire earned a B. For the other five counties, data was unavailable or complete.

Particle pollution comes from many sources, including wildfires, wood-burning devices, coal plants and diesel engines. Particulate matter is dangerous because it becomes lodged deep in the lungs and can enter the bloodstream, triggering asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, and, in some cases, causing lung cancer. For the study, researchers with the Lung Association measured particle pollution in both short- and long-term intervals. Short-term refers to daily spikes that can prove deadly, while long-term refers to yearly average.

California, which has been devastated by wildfires in recent years, is home to four of the 10 cities most polluted by short-term particle pollution, and six of the 10 most polluted year-round. Furthermore, the Golden State is home to seven of the 10 most ozone-polluted cities.

Ozone pollution, often called smog, is unhealthy and essentially leaves a sunburn on the lungs, the report said. Breathing in ozone can leave people suffering from shortness of breath and cause bouts of coughing, asthma attacks and even early death.

Los Angeles remained the city with the worst ozone for the 19th time in the report’s 20-year history. Here are the 10 places most polluted by ozone:

1. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
2. Visalia, CA
3. Bakersfield, CA
4. Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA
5. Sacramento-Roseville, CA
6. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
7. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
8. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA
9. Houston-The Woodlands, TX
10. New York-Newark, NY–NJ-CT-PA

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.