EPA has published a major report summarizing the scientific advances made by its extensive particulate matter research program.
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A report by Clear the Air entitled “Dirty Air, Dirty Power” documents, for the first time, how many heart attacks and lung cancer deaths are caused each year by coal-fired power plants.
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Nearly half the American population—more than 137 million Americans—continues to breathe unhealthy amounts of the toxic air pollutant ozone (smog), according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air: 2003″ report released today.
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More than 142 million Americans—75 percent of the nation’s population living in counties with ozone monitors—are breathing unhealthy amounts of ozone air pollution (smog), representing the third straight year in which the toxic pollutant reached fully half of the American public, according to the American Lung Association®’s State of the Air 2002 report. Of those living in the 678 counties monitoring ozone, the vast majority of the most vulnerable lived in the nearly 400 counties receiving an “F,” including nearly three-quarters of the seniors and more than 70 percent of children who had an asthma attack in the last year. The findings are compounded by the reality that, due to a series of legal and management delays, states are relying on weak federal clean air standards in place since 1979.
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Residents of predominantly non-Anglo or poorer neighborhoods in California are much more likely to breathe harmful levels of airborne soot and dust than residents of more affluent or white neighborhoods, according to state and federal data analyzed by Environmental Working Group (EWG).
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Pollution from airborne soot and dust causes or contributes to the deaths of more Californians than traffic accidents, homicide and AIDS combined, according to a report released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

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Children are at increased risk from exposure to air pollution. Children at Risk: How Air Pollution from Power Plants Threatens the Health of American’s Children, a report by the Clean Air Task Force, documents scores of recent studies indicating that exposure to air pollutants can result in respiratory hospitalizations, lost school days due to asthma attacks, low birth weight, stunted lung growth, and even infant death.
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Every year, some 64,000 people may die prematurely from cardiopulmonary causes linked to particulate air pollution, according to an analysis conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 1996.
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Many more Americans are breathing dirty air, as the outdoor air quality in nearly 400 U.S. counties has received an “F” for ozone air pollution (smog) — a fifteen percent increase from statistics released in May 2000.

According the the American Lung Assocation’s annual State of the Air report, the number of Americans living in areas that received an “F” increased by more than 9 million compared with last year’s report — from 132 million to more than 141 million.
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Ozone air pollution sends 53,000 people to the hospital, 159,000 to the emergency room, and triggers 6,200,000 asthma attacks in the Eastern half of the United States each summer, according to a recent risk assessment.
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