“The State of the Air 2024 report finds that despite decades of progress cleaning up air pollution, 39% of people living in America—131.2 million people—still live in places with failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. This is 11.7 million more people breathing unhealthy air compared to last year’s report. Nearly 4 in 10 people in America live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution. The significant rise in the number of individuals whose health is at risk is the result of a combination of factors. Extreme heat, drought and wildfires are contributing to a steady increase in deadly particle pollution, especially in the western U.S. Also, this year’s “State of the Air” report is using EPA’s new, more protective national air quality standard for year-round levels of fine particle pollution, which allows for the recognition that many more people are breathing unhealthy air than was acknowledged under the previous weak standard. Again this year, “State of the Air” finds that the burden of living with unhealthy air is not shared equally. Although people of color make up 41.6% of the overall population of the U.S., they are 52% of the people living in a county with at least one failing grade. In the counties with the worst air quality that get failing grades for all three measures of air pollution, 63% of the nearly 44 million residents are people of color, compared to 37% who are white. People of color were 2.3 times as likely as white people to live in a county with 3 failing grades. The “State of the Air” report looks at two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants, fine particles and ozone. The air quality data used in the report are collected at official monitoring sites across the United States by the federal, state, local and Tribal governments. The Lung Association calculates values reflecting the air pollution problem and assigns grades for daily and long-term measures of particle pollution and daily measures of ozone. Those values are also used to rank cities (metropolitan areas) and counties. This year’s report presents data from 2020, 2021 and 2022, the most recent quality-assured nationwide air pollution data publicly available.”