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Executive Summary
As the new home of NCPIRG's environmental work,
Environment North Carolina can be contacted with any questions regarding this
report.
This report documents the
need for aggressive action to reduce ground-level ozone, or “smog” pollution
in the U.S. Danger in the Air compiles and analyzes air quality data recorded
from hundreds of smog monitors across the nation during 2000 (from March through
October), documenting more than 4,000 recorded exceedances of EPA’s 8-hour health
standard for smog in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Only eight states
recorded no exceedances of either the 8-hour or 1-hour health standards for
smog. New Mexico had a 1-hour exceedance, but no 8-hour exceedances. Alaska
and Montana are no longer required to collect ozone data.
Smog is causing a public
health crisis, impacting people in nearly every state in the nation. A recent
study estimated that smog pollution in the summer of 1997 was responsible for
more than 6 million asthma attacks, 159,000 emergency room visits and 53,000
hospitalizations. The people most
vulnerable to the effects of breathing smoggy air are children, the elderly
and people with asthma or other respiratory diseases.
In the same way that ozone
attacks or “oxidizes” human lung tissue, it also oxidizes plant tissue, damaging
forests and crops. Ozone leaves plants unable to respond to normal demands of
growth and development, as well as abnormal demands caused by bad weather, pests,
or nutrient deficiencies. The impact of ozone on eastern forests has been dramatic.
For example, a decline of 26 percent to 51 percent in the growth rate of eastern
white pines in the Blue Ridge Mountains has been attributed to ozone pollution.
Ozone damages to crops in the Midwest and Southeast costs farmers as much as
one billion dollars annually.
Smog is formed when nitrogen
oxides, emitted as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels at electric power plants
and in automobiles, mix with volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight
and heat. Therefore, unhealthy levels of smog are generally recorded during
the summer smog season. In most states, smog season stretches from early May
until late September, lasting approximately five months. In recent years, Southern
states have had longer smog seasons. For example, in 2000, March 8th was the
first day on which an exceedance of the EPA 8-hour health standard for smog
was recorded in Georgia and Tennessee, and March 14th was the first smog day
in California. California, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida had smog days as late as
October or even November 2000.
Danger in the Air
documents each instance in which the federal health standard for smog was exceeded
nationwide for both the new 8-hour health standard, which is currently awaiting
review by the Supreme Court, and the less protective 1-hour standard. A day
is considered “unhealthy” if there was at least one exceedance that occurred
at a monitor in the state. Therefore, a state can have several exceedances,
from several different monitors, on the same day, but it is still counted as
one unhealthy day.
Most of the data included
in this report was collected directly from the individual state air pollution
control agencies. Since the Environmental Protection Agency does not “quality
assure” the final numbers until late January of each year, the numbers included
in this report are considered preliminary. In previous years, once the data
were quality assured, the final number of exceedances and smog days increased
dramatically. For instance, the 1998 California total increased by 58% after
it was quality-assured by the EPA. This report is intended to provide a snapshot
of how bad the 2000 smog season was, and what can be done to improve the quality
of our air.
The major findings of this
report are:
• Nationwide, there were
at least 4006 recorded exceedances of EPA’s 8-hour health standard for smog
in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
• Nationwide, there were
at least 388 recorded exceedances of the less protective 1-hour health standard
for smog in 26 states.
• The Midwest, Ohio Valley
and most of the East Coast experienced cooler temperatures throughout most of
this summer than in the previous two years. Therefore, 2000 was less smoggy
than 1998 and 1999, when more than 7,000 exceedances were recorded in each year.
The ten states with the highest number of unhealthy smog days in 2000 were:
California (126), Texas (70), Georgia (58), Tennessee (53), Louisiana (44),
North Carolina (38), Florida (36), Alabama (26), Arizona (26), South Carolina
(25). Unfortunately, even absent the record hot temperatures of recent years,
the health standard for smog was exceeded more than 4000 times.
• The 10 states with the
highest number of exceedances of the 8-hour smog standard were: California (1292),
Texas (342), North Carolina (267), Tennessee (225), Georgia (216), Louisiana
(204), Ohio (135), Pennsylvania (113), Maryland (100), and Indiana (94).
The population of California
was exposed to the highest 8-hour average smog concentrations in the nation.
In fact, the four highest smog concentrations recorded this summer were all
recorded at California monitors. Furthermore, the highest numbers of 8-hour
exceedances were all recorded at California monitors.
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