Nearly half of US children are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, report warns | US news

Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, a new report suggests, as experts warn Donald Trump’s wholesale rollback of protections will only make the situation worse.

The American Lung Association’s (ALA) 27th Annual Air Quality Report, released Wednesday, assesses pollution across the country by assessing levels of ground-level ozone – also known as smog – as well as peaks in particulate matter pollution, commonly known as soot, throughout the year and in the short term. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024.

It found that 33.5 million children in the United States – 46% of those under 18 – live in areas that received a failing grade on at least one measure of air pollution.

The report also found that 7 million children, or 10 percent of all children in the United States, live in communities that did not meet all three measures.

Speaking to the Guardian, Will Barrett, ALA’s deputy vice president for national clean air policy, said: “Children’s lungs are still developing. For their size, they breathe more air. And also, children play outside, they are more active, they breathe more outside air… So exposure to air pollution in children can contribute to long-term problems with the development of their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risks of respiratory diseases and other health problems later in life.

The report further reveals that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, including asthma, diabetes and heart disease.

Although people of color make up 42.1 percent of the U.S. population, they make up 54.2 percent of those living in counties with at least one failing grade, the report notes. The study also found that a person of color is 2.42 times more likely than a white person to live in a community that does not meet all three pollution measures.

Smog remains the most prevalent pollutant affecting Americans’ health. Between 2022 and 2024, 38% of the U.S. population – or approximately 129.1 million people – was exposed to health-threatening levels of ozone. This is the highest number recorded in the ALA report in six years, and an increase of 3.9 million from the previous year.

Several factors have contributed to these unhealthy pollution levels, including extreme heat, drought and wildfires that have exposed a growing share of the population to harmful ozone, the report said.

The regions most affected by high ozone levels include the southwestern states, from California to Texas, as well as much of the Midwest. This is primarily due to smoke from the 2023 wildfires in Canada that passed through the United States, as well as high temperatures and weather conditions that favored ozone formation in 2023 and 2024, particularly in the southern states.

More broadly, the report finds that climate change intensifies ozone pollution by increasing emissions of precursors and creating atmospheric conditions such as higher temperatures and lower wind speeds that allow pollutants to accumulate and ozone to form.

The report also highlights that data centers are a growing source of air pollution. In recent years, data centers have consumed about 4.4% of total electricity in the United States, a figure that could rise to 12% over the next decade.

Their impact largely stems from reliance on regional power grids where fossil fuels such as methane and coal still account for much of production, the report said. Additionally, many data centers use dozens of large diesel-powered backup generators, which emit carcinogenic particles.

“As demand for more data centers continues to grow, the focus must be on clean, combustion-free renewable energy sources that add, not take away, from the grid,” Barrett said.

He also highlighted a series of environmental rollbacks by the current Environmental Protection Agency, warning that it was further endangering air quality.

“The EPA devalues children’s health as it weakens, delays and eliminates critical health protections,” he said, pointing to setbacks including “missing deadlines for particle pollution standards, repealing vehicle standards, abrogating EPA’s responsibility to protect health from climate pollution, and even allowing increased pollution emissions from oil and gas facilities.” gas”. He also cited mercury – a toxic air contaminant released by coal-fired power plants – as a major concern.

“[There is] a large-scale effort by the federal EPA to eliminate health protections while distancing themselves from their own mission of protecting public health,” Barrett added.

Since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has launched at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. Among them is easing regulations on power plants that limit mercury and other dangerous toxic substances in the air.

Other rollbacks include reversing limits on major sources of air pollution, disbanding the EPA’s air quality advisory committees, and ending the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting fine particulate matter and ozone while continuing to calculate costs to businesses.