“Almost half the country — 147 million Americans, to be precise — live in counties with unhealthy air, according to a new report.
The data was pulled from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and analyzed by the American Lung Association (ALA). They tracked two forms of pollution over the 2010-2012 time period. One form was small particles like soot that hang in the air, and which the ALA tracked on both short-term and a year-round basis. The other was ozone, the main ingredient in smog and air pollution, which is created when nitrogen oxides and other chemicals interact with heat and sunlight.
About 147 million Americans live in counties where at least one of those measures — short-term particle pollution, year-round particle pollution, or ozone — topped national safety standards often enough to be a threat to public health. Over 27 million Americans live in counties where all three measures are at unhealthy levels.”
Read more here: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/30/3432601/147-million-air-pollution-ala/
Ana Kasparian, Jayar Jackson and John Iadarola of The Young Turks break down the recent study.