Pittsburgh Area Has Awful Air Quality: American Lung Association

PITTSBURGH, PA — You may want to hold your breath after learning how poor the air quality is in southwestern Pennsylvania. The American Lung Association's annual State Of The Air report, released Wednesday, found that the Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton metro area tied for the eighth-most polluted city in the country for its year-round average levels of fine particle pollution.

The region was one of only nine in the nation to get a failing grade and the only metro area outside of California to do so.

The news in the report wasn't all bad. Although the region still failed to meet air quality standards, the region did match its best-ever year-round average of fine particle pollution, the lung association said. The region dropped from the nation's 10th most polluted area in the nation to 16th.

The Pittsburgh metro area improved slightly for ozone smog but ranked 30th out of 229 metro areas for days with high levels of ozone. Ozone and particle pollution are the nation’s most widespread air pollutants and both can be deadly, according to the lung association.

Allegheny County was one of only 14 counties in the nation that posted failing grades for all three measures of air pollution.

Jim Kelly, Allegheny County's deputy director of environmental health, said the health department is working to improve air quality throughout the county.

"As part of our efforts, we recently launched a new air quality dashboard to provide a better understanding of the data in their neighborhood," he said. "While we have made great strides with our efforts to improve air quality, we also understand that work remains, particularly in the Mon Valley. As such, the health department will continue to be aggressive with enforcement, transparent with our data and innovative with our policies.”

See the entire State Of The Air report here.