Half of U.S. lives with unhealthy air, says ALA's annual "State of the Air" report

The American Lung Association's (ALA) annual "State of the Air" report has found that half of Americans still live in counties where ozone or particle pollutions levels make the air unhealthy to breathe. The 15th annual national report card shows that while the nation overall continued to reduce particle pollution, a pollutant recently found to cause lung cancer, poor air quality remains a significant public health concern and a changing climate threatens to make it harder to protect human health. Especially alarming is that levels of ozone (smog), a powerful respiratory irritant and the most widespread air pollutant, were much worse than in the previous year's report. More