This is the second post in a four-part blog series on air quality.
Now that you have a solid understanding of air pollutants it’s time to look at what is in the air you (yes, you) are breathing at home. We compiled data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for eight cities throughout Pennsylvania and put it into an interactive infographic. Check out how your region stacks up!
If you don’t live in Pennsylvania or are just curious to see how other cities in the USA compare, our friends at the Breathe Project (based in Pittsburgh) have created an interactive Breathe Meter. As you can tell, there’s still a lot to clean up in order to make sure the air we’re breathing isn’t harming our health.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series to find out who makes the standards and how they were established.
Nicole Catino is Penn Future’s 2015 Student Conservation Association Green Cities Sustainability Fellow and is based in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh used to be so polluted that it was referred to as “hell with
the lid off.” The pollution is mostly invisible these days, however, “out of sight” usually
means “out of mind.”
A recent survey by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette showed that
Pittsburghers care about the environment more than ever. Sixty four percent of
responders believe that climate change is a problem and a whopping 96 percent
believe that the environment is important to Pittsburgh’s economic outlook, but
the majority still doesn’t believe that the region’s air quality is a problem
because they can’t see it. Unfortunately, it's the pollution that can’t be
seen by the naked eye that can do the most damage. Fine soot particles can
wreak havoc on the body, and contribute to lung cancer, lung disease, and heart
disease.
Still, it's great to see that area residents feel strongly about the
environment. There are many great organizations in the region, and campaigns including the Breathe Project, that are educating citizens about the state of our air
and how we can improve it.
