In Virginia, Air Quality Depends on Where You Live

Richmond, VA -- Today, the American Lung Association released their 2018 State of Air report, with Virginian cities ranking among both the cleanest and most polluted U.S. cities for air pollution. This report was released a day after Virginia state officials from environmental and energy state agencies signed a letter opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan.

Six Virginia cities are ranked among the cleanest cities in the U.S., with one city ranked among the most polluted cities. Roanoke is among the cleanest U.S. cities for ozone air pollution. Five other cities are the cleanest in the country for short-term particle pollution (excluding other pollutants): Charlottesville, Harrisonburg-Staunton-Waynesboro, Lynchburg, Richmond, and Virginia Beach-Norfolk. The Washington-Baltimore-Arlington metropolitan area is one of the country’s most polluted cities due to ozone pollution; Fairfax also receives an F score due to high ozone days.

Breathing ozone irritates the lungs, resulting in something similar to a bad sunburn within the lungs. Ozone is linked to increased risk of lower birth weight in newborns, with air pollution triggering asthma attacks and harming lung development in children. EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, and President Trump, supported by corporate polluters and some members of Congress, have been working diligently to weaken and rollback many of the protections in place to under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Power Plan.

Cutting air pollution through the Clean Air Act will prevent at least 230,000 deaths and save $2 trillion annually by 2020. Recent proposed efforts to weaken the safeguard that has protected Americans for five decades include exempting certain polluting facilities from some emissions controls, delaying science-based updates to air pollution standards, and undermining public health as the core premise of the Act’s key pollution limits.

“The State of Air report provides an opportunity for state officials, companies, and residents to recognize the positive impact of clean air protections while acknowledging that there is still more work to be done. Despite the fact that data shows we, as a country and a state, need to be strengthening standards to safeguards for clean air, we are desperately fighting to keep existing protections from being rolled back,” Kate Addleson, Director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, said.

A second threat to Virginia’s families is the ongoing efforts by Scott Pruitt to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP), issued in 2014 under the Clean Air Act. The CPP established a federal framework to reduce carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants that contribute to climate change enhancing conditions for ozone formation and making it harder to reduce this lethal pollutant. Yesterday, state officials from fourteen environmental and energy agencies representing thirteen states submitted joint comments to the EPA opposing its proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan; the letter’s signatories represented 114 million people, including Virginian residents. Virginia’s Governor Northam has also been a staunch supporter of the Executive Directive 11, the state’s carbon reduction plan to limit pollutants from fossil-fuel burning power plants. The public comments period for CPP ends on April 26.