Air quality: ‘We still have a long way to go’

By Mallory Panuska
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT May 18, 2008 12:35 am

— The air quality of most West Virginia counties and metropolitan areas is not up to par with standards set by the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic.
The organization’s State of the Air: 2008 report measuring air pollution data from 2004 to 2006 was released at the beginning of this month.
The results show that while many areas have reported fewer ozone levels, the particle-pollution levels have gone unchanged from the last report issued in 2006, said Deborah Brown, vice president of community outreach and advocacy of the American Lung Association.
“We still have a long way to go in West Virginia so everyone can breathe clean and better air,” Brown said.
According to the report, eight West Virginia counties, including Monongalia, were monitored for ozone pollutants and given grades A through F depending on the levels. Monongalia County was actually one of the only counties that received an improved grade, going from a C to a B in the 2008 data.
Marion County currently is not included in this report, but the Fairmont-Clarksburg metropolitan area was monitored for fine-particle pollution. According to the results, this area is currently the 88th worst in the country for that type of air pollution. Brown said that while this number is not significantly bad, there is definitely room for improvement.
“We generally look at the top 25, but anytime someone is breathing air pollution, it is still putting them at risk,” Brown said. “The air still isn’t clean enough.”
Eleven counties were also given pass or fail denominations for average annual long-term particle pollution levels, of which six continued to post fail grades, and just one, Marshall County, improved from a fail to a pass. Short-term daily particle-pollution totals were also taken in 12 counties, and results were mixed.
Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association, explained that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decides which counties and metropolitan areas to monitor for air pollutants across the country. The American Lung Association then collects the data in three-year intervals to educate people about their regional air quality. He said the EPA chooses counties with sufficient populations or large sources of air pollution to monitor for the report.
Brown explained that when people breathe in polluted air, it can cause health problems.
“Particularly for people who have respiratory problems, particle pollution can increase the risk of asthma attacks and can aggravate them and cause hospitalization as result of that,” Brown said.
She added that air pollutants can also increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and extended over long time periods of time can even cause lung cancer. She said that even healthy adults can experience inflamed lung tissue from breathing in various pollutants and shortness of breath because of exposure to ozone gases.
Besides bigger efforts such as cleaning up power plants, some ways Brown said that individuals can help improve the air quality of their regions is by making efforts to use less energy and electricity, driving less, combining car trips, car pooling, and trying not to burn wood.
“There are a lot of little things we can do as well as a lot of big things that need to take place,” she said.
Since the American Lung Association began producing the State of the Air reports about nine years ago, Stewart said people have become much more aware of the harmful pollutants they are breathing into their systems.
He said that while the monitors have been installed since the 1970s, people have only been really paying attention to the data since the American Lung Association started with the reports, which has been beneficial.
“The lung association, in the late ’90s, thought we should communicate to the public how the air quality is affecting their health,” Stewart said. “It was a way to communicate to the public in a way that really made sense to them.”
He added that the reports have drawn the attention of the public media, public officials and other groups and individuals to set regulations to control air pollution across the country.
“I think it certainly has drawn a lot of attention,” Stewart said of the reports.
For more information, Stewart advised people to log onto www.stateoftheair.org or www.lunguse.org to find out about air quality standards and how to improve them.
E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.