Report: Pittsburgh region among worst in nation for air quality

The Pittsburgh region was again ranked among the worst regions in the nation for air quality by the American Lung Association. Allegheny County received straight “F” grades for air quality.

The association’s yearly State of the Air report, released Tuesday, evaluated air quality data from the three-year period from 2016 through 2018.

The Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, W.Va., metro area tied for the eighth-most polluted city in the nation for year-round average levels of fine particle pollution. Overall, it was ranked the 16th-worst polluted in the nation — an improvement over its 10th-place ranking in the 2019 report.

“That part of progress is something that we have regularly recognized when we’ve been looking at the area in past years,” said Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health with the American Lung Association. “There’s been a lot of work done. But at the same time there continues to be difficulty in both ground-level ozone smog and fine particle pollution.”

Allegheny County was one of 14 counties nationwide assigned a failing “F” grade for three measures of air pollution — ozone, particle pollution in a 24-hour period and annual particle pollution.

That amounted to dozens of days of poor air quality over the three-year period included in the report, Stewart said.

“For people in high-risk groups, these kinds of exposure will make them more likely to need medication, go see their doctor, go to the emergency room, be hospitalized and in some cases die,” he said.

Stewart noted that some types of air pollution, like ground-level ozone smog, could be generated outside county borders and, over time, move throughout the area.

“The ground-level ozone smog level in Allegheny County is also elevated, and ozone is something that isn’t put out directly by smokestacks and tailpipes,” Stewart said. “It’s something that takes time to create in the atmosphere, typically on hot sunny, relatively still days.”

Beaver County also received an “F” grade for ozone pollution. Westmoreland County received a “D,” and Washington County received a “C.”

The 2020 State of the Air report does not include data from 2019, when a fire at one of the region’s biggest air polluters, the Clairton Coke Works, knocked out pollution control equipment for several months.

That data will be captured by next year’s report.

Health Department responds

Officials from the Allegheny County Health Department, which enforces air quality standards in Allegheny County, highlighted the progress the county has made since 2018 in improving air quality.

That includes some improvements in particulate matter and sulfur dioxide levels, Jim Kelly, Allegheny County Health Department deputy director of environmental health, said in a statement.

“To see the desired improvements in air quality, Allegheny County Health Department will continue to be aggressive with enforcement and forward-thinking in its policies,” Kelly said. “Allegheny County Health Department cannot achieve this goal alone and calls upon industry leaders at the local and regional levels to take necessary steps to improve air quality and environmental organizations to work with the Allegheny County Health Department to find creative ways to address these issues together. We all want and deserve clean air.”

Kelly also noted that the report relies on data from the region’s Liberty monitor, located at the South Allegheny High School in McKeesport, and does not include data from the region’s seven other monitors.

“While our overall ranking has improved slightly, at the end of the day our region is still failing — an F is an F — and that is unacceptable,” said Rachel Filippini, executive director of GASP, a Pittsburgh-based environmental group focused on air quality. “Unfortunately, nothing in this report should come as a surprise to local residents or the Allegheny County Health Department. Locally, ACHD knows what needs to be done: It can improve air quality by revising the county’s coke-oven regulations and developing strong regulations that impose corrective action requirements on industry during short-term pollution events.”