American Lung Association gives South County an "F" for ozone air pollution

Who would have thought our rural paradise would suffer from air pollution?

By Will Collette 

The American Lung Association, that's who. For the past several years, I've been running pollution alerts from the state Health Department that warned that ground ozone pollution - mostly generated by cars - posed a danger to the health of the young, old and people with breathing problems such as COPD. 

It seemed to me that air quality got worse in Washington County year after year. According to Lung Association data, that's actually been happening. 

I blame the influx of summer people whose summer sojourns to Charlestown triple our population from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

As the chart to the left shows, more than 100,000 are at risk. 

According to American Lung Association Advocacy Director Daniel Fitzgerald, “This air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, contributing to chronic health conditions, and making people who work outdoors sick...To compound the issue further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rollbacks of critical healthy air rules are impacting our residents."

See the full report results at Lung.org/sota.