Most Americans are breathing cleaner air, even as cars flood the roads and populations boom, according to recent environmental data.
An Environmental Protection Agency report shows air pollution declined dramatically between 1990 and 2008 thanks to increasingly stringent vehicle, industry and consumer standards.
Ozone levels nationally are down 14 percent, lead, 78 percent, and carbon monoxide, 68 percent, among other reductions in the six most common air pollutants, the report said.
And the Washington area mirrors the nationwide trend.
“Air quality is improving in the region — there is no question about that,” said Joan Rohlfs, chief of air quality planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. “It’s very dramatic, actually. In fact, it’s almost an issue for us because people are losing their awareness [of air pollution]. We don’t have that many code-red days anymore.”
In 1998, nearly 50 days were classified as code orange or red — unhealthy for sensitive groups or unhealthy for everybody — compared with four such days last year, according to COG.
Rohlfs attributed the improvement to the phasing out of older cars, cleaner power plants and pushes by local governments to encourage public transit.
However, the EPA cautioned that about 127 million people lived in counties in 2008 that exceeded some national air quality standards.
Total emissions of toxic air pollutants also fell roughly 40 percent between 1990 and 2005 in the wake of tougher environmental regulations for chemical plants.
Some researchers say the public is being presented with a doomsday scenario of the nation’s air quality despite the improvements.
“No one ever really looks at the data,” said Steven Hayward, a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. “[Public officials] never stand up and say here is the progress we’ve made.”
President Obama took note of the improvement in his Earth Day video address.
“Today our air and water are cleaner,” he said. “Pollution has been greatly reduced, and Americans everywhere are living in a healthier environment.”
