Nearly Half of People in U.S. Exposed to Dangerous Air Pollution Levels

Nearly half of the people living in the U.S. breathe unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s 2025 State of the Air report. In total, the report finds that 156 million people, 25 million more than last year’s report, are living in areas that received an “F” grade for either ozone or particle pollution. Extreme heat and wildfires contributed to worse air quality for millions of people across the U.S.

The Lung Association’s 26th annual report grades exposure to unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone air pollution (also known as smog), and year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution (also known as soot) over a three-year period. The report looks at the latest quality-assured air quality data from 2021-2023.

“Families across the U.S. are dealing with the health impacts of air pollution every day, and extreme heat and wildfires are making it worse,” said Harold Wimmer, American Lung Association president and CEO. “Air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick, and leading to low birth weight in babies. This year’s report shows the dramatic impact that air pollution has on a growing number of people. Even as more people are breathing unhealthy air, the federal staff, programs, and policies that are supposed to be cleaning up pollution are facing rollbacks, restructuring and funding challenges. For decades, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked to ensure people have clean air to breathe, from providing trustworthy air quality forecasts to making sure polluters who violate the law clean up. Efforts to slash staff, funding and programs at EPA are leaving families even more vulnerable to harmful air pollution. We need to protect EPA.”

The State of the Air report found that 156 million people in the U.S. (46%) live in an area that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution and 42.5 million people live in areas with failing grades for all three measures. The report also found that a person of color in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a white individual to live in a community with a failing grade on all three pollution measures. Notably, Hispanic individuals are nearly three times as likely as white individuals to live in a community with three failing grades.

The air pollutants covered in the report are widespread and can impact anyone’s health. Both ozone and particle pollution can cause premature death and other serious health effects such as asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, preterm births and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also cause lung cancer.