The Washington-Baltimore-Arlington region received a failing grade for smog in the American Lung Association’s 27th annual “State of the Air” report card, released Wednesday.
The air quality assessment for 2022-2024 also warned that Trump administration deregulation policies would allow the creation of more toxic air for 700,288 children exposed in the District, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia.
“To compound the issue further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s rollbacks of critical healthy air rules are impacting our residents,” said Aleks Casper, the association’s director of advocacy. “We urge DMV policymakers to continue to take action to improve our air quality, and we are calling on everyone to tell EPA that our kids’ health counts.”
Ms. Casper said that ozone and particle pollution are “causing kids to have asthma attacks, contributing to chronic health conditions, and making people who work outdoors sick.”
According to the report, year-round and daily particle pollution improved slightly from “F” to “D” grades in the latest three years of EPA measurements. Frederick County, Virginia, and the District averaged a region-worst 3.2 unhealthy days per year during the period.
The association warned that air pollution exposes children to asthma, reduced lung growth and respiratory illness.
An EPA spokesperson pushed back against the report’s warnings in an email that accused the association of taking “lots of money from left-wing foundations” to promote climate alarmism.
“This administration has repeatedly proven that we can both protect human health and the environment and grow the economy,” the EPA spokesperson wrote. “And we will continue to do so in order to deliver clean air for every American to breathe.”
The emailed statement also insisted that “hundreds of environmental wins” over the past year helped the Trump team build on “massive improvements” to air quality in recent decades.
Nationally, the American Lung Association’s report found that 152 million people — 44% of the U.S. population — lived in areas with failing grades for smog or particle between 2022 and 2024, including 33.5 million children.
Ozone smog, the most common airborne irritant, forms when sunlight interacts with emissions from car tailpipes, smokestacks and factories. Particle pollution arises from wildfires, wood stoves, coal power plants and diesel engines.
The Trump administration has moved to fire hundreds of EPA employees, deregulate the agency and cancel $14 billion in climate change grants approved by the Biden administration.
President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have repeatedly called for cleaner water and air in the nation’s capital.
