Philly gets failing grades for air pollution that makes asthma worse

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Philadelphia received straight “F’s” for air quality in the American Lung Association’s annual assessment of the nation’s air pollution, highlighting levels of common pollutants that exacerbate asthma and can even trigger heart attacks.

For particulate pollution, Philly’s grade declined from last year’s report — reflecting what the association called “worsening levels of air pollution across much of the U.S.”

“Citizens of Philly and the surrounding area need to be more aware than ever that their air is polluted, and that it’s having very real impacts on their health,” said Dr. Hari Shankar, a pulmonary critical care physician and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Failing grades for pollutants that worsen asthma

Philly was one of 17 Pennsylvania counties that received an F grade for particle pollution in the American Lung Association’s latest annual State of the Air report. The rating is based on the city experiencing more than five days of unhealthy levels of particle pollution on average per year from 2021 through 2023. The pollutant comes from sources including construction sites, fires, vehicles and power plants. It can aggravate asthma and other lung issues, and is even linked with heart attacks.

“It can lead to higher rates of heart disease, it can lead to elevated blood pressure as well as a variety of other long-term effects,” Shankar said.

The Philly metro area ranked 30th worst in the country for short-term particulate pollution and third worst in the Mid-Atlantic region.

“That’s really serious,” Stewart said.

The city also received a failing grade for ground-level ozone pollution, which can inflame airways, make asthma attacks more likely and leave lungs more vulnerable to infections. The city saw on average more than six days per year of unhealthy ground-level ozone levels between 2021 and 2023, according to the report. The pollutant forms from chemicals released by vehicles and industrial facilities.

Young children and elderly people, as well as pregnant people and those with underlying heart or lung diseases are most likely to experience adverse health impacts from poor air quality.

“Even one bad air day can be one bad air day too many for someone in a high-risk group,” Stewart said.

Racial disparities in exposure to air pollution across the country

The association found that people of color were more than twice as likely as white people to live in places with failing grades on all of the pollution measures the report tracked. Hispanic people were more than three times as likely as white people to live in a community that received all F grades.

The report only offers metro area- and county-wide ratings. But Clean Air Council advocate Russell Zerbo says within Philadelphia, some of the places most exposed to unhealthy air pollution includes neighborhoods located along highways.

“The largest contributor to poor air quality is from transportation,” he said.

In Philadelphia, Black and Hispanic children are hospitalized due to asthma at much higher rates than white and Asian children.

Wildfire smoke contributed to Philly’s failing grade

The air quality data included in the report includes the summer of 2023, when smoke from wildfires in Canada clouded Philly’s sky, at one point sending the city’s air quality index spiking into the hazardous range.

This likely drove the drop in Philly’s rating for particulate pollution from a “C” in last year’s report to an F in this year’s. Philly was not the only city to see a decline, Stewart said.

“There was a region-wide phenomenon, and the obvious explanation for the region-wide phenomenon is the smoke from the wildfires in Canada,” he said.

During the smokiest days in 2023, Dr. Shankar remembers patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma or other underlying conditions going to the emergency room because of worsened symptoms.

“It was almost as if they inhaled a lung full of smoke, which is exactly what happened,” he said.

A federal push for deregulation

The failing grades, which reflect conditions in 2021 through 2023, come as the Environmental Protection Agency plans to reconsider dozens of environmental rules and policies, including several related to air quality, in what it called the “Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History.”

It would take time for the EPA to actually change regulations, and any changes may not have immediate impacts on air quality, said Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association. But the research and advocacy organization is pushing for preservation of the EPA’s staff and air quality programs.

“We need to have proper staffing, adequate funding, and enforcement of the laws as they are written in order to protect public health,” he said.