WKSU Stories

New State of the Air Report Shows Mixed Results in Ohio

Ideastream Public Media | By Cameron Gorman

Published April 18, 2018 at 5:46 PM EDT

Historic photo of Cleveland skyline pollution. New report show's Ohio's air quality has generally improved or stayed the same as recent years but certain scores including Cleveland's high-ozone days are failing.

The American Lung Association's 19^th annual “State of the Air” report shows Cleveland with the 10th -worst year-round particle air pollution, and downgraded Summit County's air rating from an A to a B for ozone.

Ken Fletcher is the director of advocacy for the American Lung Association in Ohio. He says that in most parts of the state, there wasn’t much change in air quality from the year before, but there were some exceptions.

Ken Fletcher addresses some of the issues with Ohio air quality

“We definitely need to do a much better job and clean up that particle pollution. We also have too many high-ozone days, too; we’re getting an F in that category. So Cleveland, even though progress has been made, there’s still work to be done, it still is unhealthy,” said Fletcher.

This year’s report found that nearly 140 million Americans lived in counties with “unhealthful levels of either ozone of particle pollution.”