10 U.S. Cities With the Worst Air Pollution
Better air quality
Air has gotten cleaner in recent years. But more than half of people in the U.S. still breathe air dirty enough to cause health problems, according to an American Lung Association (ALA) report .
"There is always going to be a dirtiest city," says Joel Kaufman, MD, director of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program at the University of Washington, in Seattle.
Here are the 10 cities with the highest levels of fine particulates, based on annual average. Particulates are tiny (2.5 microns or smaller) and get deep in the lungs, causing health problems.
Bakersfield, Calif.
Population: 874,589
Bakersfield, Calif., residents breathe some of the country’s most polluted air, based on several measures. The area ranks highest in annual and 24-hour peak averages in fine particulates.
Agriculture in this region of the San Joaquin Valley "whips up" a lot of dust, pesticides, and fertilizers, says Dr. Kaufman.
North of Los Angeles, the area also has the second-highest level of ozone pollution in the U.S. Mountains surround the valley on three sides, creating inversion layers that trap pollution, with little wind to carry it away.
Louisville-Jefferson County-Elizabethtown-Madison, KY-IN
Population: 1,498,593
The Louisville area is surrounded on all sides by hills that can hold dirty air hostage.
The heat island effect also concentrates pollutants in the urban region of Louisville.
The region is 10th for annual particle pollution and 53rd for 24-hour particle pollution, but didn't make the top 25 list for ozone.
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In all honesty, most of these places can't do much about their situation. There are thousands of acres of farmland with all that dust and all those valleys just to collect it with nowhere to go.
I read if Brussels was a United States city it would be the dirtiest city in the country, so I guess we're doing better than the Europeans for the most part.
When I first moved to Los Angeles more then 25 years ago I lived up in the Valley in a pool house in West Hills just off Topanga Canyon Road. I worked 3rd shift down in South-Central at the intersection of Western Ave and Imperial Highway. When I would drive to work the air was fairly clean since the traffic was fairly light. I could actually make it all of the way down to work in about a 1/2 hour if the Highway Patrol wasn't paying too much attention and I could drive 90mph through the Sepulveda Pass. No smell. In the morning when I got off from work it was at least a 2 hour drive (I used to by an LA Times outside of my office and read it propped up on my steering wheel while I inched up the 405) back up the 405 to the 101 and home (usually with a stop at the IHOP for breakfast at my exit) and I could smell the gas fumes until I got up into the pass and above the smog and into clean air. I could see a light smog behind me and a light smog in front of me waiting in the Valley. You could actually tell when you were coming down from the pass by going through the layer of gasoline smell. It came right into your car.
Still, when my wife and I moved there from Santa Rosa in late 2000 there was no problem at all. We lived in Hollywood (in a guest house at first and then in a bungalow in the old studio district...nice!). We noticed no smog at all. We had clear views, except for the spring fogs (which usually burnt off by about noon), all of the way across the basin from one side to the other and no smell at all, even during the worst rush hour (and DAMN LA has some bad rush hours, but I still love that city!!!). Nothing but great, clear air from the mountains all of the way to the ocean. Great mountain views (with snow on them in the winter) and no noticeable smog at all. None at all. I am not sure what they did, but it sure worked. L.A. is now a great and very breathable place to live.