Methane emissions cause ozone pollution (near term) & climate change (long term)

From an Article by Michael Booth, Colorado Sun, July 25, 2022

DCP Operating Company LP settles with federal and state officials over allegations of failing to detect gases contributing to Front Range ozone. This Colorado natural gas processor will pay a $3.25 million fine in a settlement with federal and state air pollution officials, after allegations the company failed to detect and repair leaks that contributed to worsening ozone problems on the northern Front Range.

DCP Operating Company LP and five related subsidiaries will pay the fines and make repairs, in a consent decree announced by the regional Environmental Protection Agency office in Denver after allegations of leaks and failure to repair at gas processing locations in Greeley, Platteville and other Weld County locations. Weld County is part of the EPA’s northern Front Range nonattainment area for ongoing ozone violations, and state and local governments must come up with plans to cut emissions that contribute to the health-harming gas.

The decree says DCP does not admit to liability for the allegations, but will have to pay the fine and also invest millions of dollars in equipment and systems to prevent new leaks. The decree was negotiated with EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division, part of the state health department.

“Enforcement actions like this are critical to improving air quality, particularly in places facing air quality challenges like Weld County,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement. Soon after the fine announcement, the state health department issued another Ozone Action Day Alert for the Front Range, one of many so far this summer, warning vulnerable residents to avoid too much outdoor activity for 24 hours.

“EPA continues to deliver cleaner air through the rigorous enforcement of the Clean Air Act,” EPA Regional Administrator KC Becker said in a statement. “This settlement will reduce emissions of over 288 tons of volatile organic compounds and 1,300 tons of methane from production areas near northern Colorado communities, a majority of which are disproportionately impacted by pollution.”

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Executive Director Jill Hunsaker Ryan credited state inspectors and enforcement personnel from the air division’s leak detection and repair program. She said the settlement will go to the state’s Community Impact Fund, which helps pay for local environmental justice projects.

DCP will now have to bolster leak detection and repair at facilities in the Greeley, Kersey/Mewbourne, Platteville, Roggen, Spindle, O’Connor and Lucerne processing plants, and the future Bighorn plant. The requirements include new equipment that leaks less, tightening compliance with rules, repairing leaks faster, and staff training. The decree says the company will also use optical imaging technology to find and repair leaks faster.

One repair on two turbines at the Kersey/Mewbourne plant will cost $1.15 million, and is expected to reduce VOCs there by 26 tons a year, and methane by 375 tons a year, according to the agreement. Natural gas processing facilities separate impurities and liquids from the gas. Methane also contributes to global warming, multiplying greenhouse gases by dozens of times the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

Ground-level ozone causes respiratory illness, aggravates asthma, and can worsen existing heart disease.

A related company, DCP Midstream, was fined $5.3 million by New Mexico regulators in 2020 for alleged repeated violations of state air pollution emissions rules.

EPA and state officials say they are focusing tightly on northern Front Range oil and gas operations. The EPA last year reached a $1 million settlement with Noble Energy over alleged violations from oil tank batteries in Weld County floodplains.

DCP said in an email statement that the company started working on some of the fixes in the decree as early as 2019. “The settlement agreement resolves an administrative enforcement matter with the EPA and the State of Colorado and is also in line with our commitment to responsible environmental management and sustainability,” said DCP manager of public affairs Jeanette Alberg. The agreement “is consistent with our ongoing efforts to reduce emissions within our company footprint and is a positive outcome for all of our stakeholders,” she said. DCP is also upgrading Colorado facilities not mentioned in the settlement, the company said.

Environmental groups responded with skepticism, noting a recent hearing in front of the Air Quality Control Commission where northern Front Range cities said their own studies showed emissions are not down.

“This just continues to underscore the oil and gas industry’s rampant noncompliance with clean air laws and the terrible toll that continues to be taken on air quality along the Front Range,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians. “Studies have basically confirmed that oil and gas industry emissions have not decreased over the years. It’s good that regulators are pressing DCP, Nichols said, “but it doesn’t seem like industry is truly changing its ways and doing everything it can and should to comply.”

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CLEAN AIR COUNCIL Recommendation ~

Tell the EPA to finalize the strongest air pollution regulations possible. This includes a ban on gas flaring or venting unless in absolute emergencies, consistent methane monitoring at all oil and gas facilities (including smaller, leak-prone wells), and requiring “no-bleed” pneumatic controllers and pumps at all gas wells and compressor stations.

We Need the Strongest Methane Rule Possible

>>> From the Clean Air Council, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Pittsburgh, June 10, 2022

Later this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be proposing the full version of its much anticipated rule limiting climate-changing methane and asthma-causing volatile organic compound (VOC) pollution from new and existing oil and gas facilities. In a draft rule published by the EPA in November 2021, the EPA specifically requested input about a variety of topics within the rule, such as lowering emissions from orphaned and abandoned wells as well as the logistics of community air monitoring networks.

We need the EPA to propose the strongest rule possible in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, reduce carcinogens like benzene, and reduce VOC pollution that reacts in heat to form dangerous ground-level-ozone (smog). Methane pollution has 87 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year time period and, according to the EPA, is responsible for 30% of the increased temperatures and precipitation we are currently experiencing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted an “above average” hurricane season for the 7th consecutive year.

In addition to the oil and gas industry’s impact on the climate chaos we are currently experiencing, researchers continue to identify new public health issues related to ground-level ozone pollution, the main component of smog. Beyond the well-known effects of smog on your respiratory system leading to conditions like asthma, a recent study has also linked smog pollution to “cognitive decline.”

Please click here to tell the EPA to propose the strongest methane standard for oil and gas facilities possible.

>>> Sincerely, Joseph Otis Minott, Esq., Executive Director and Chief Counsel, Clean Air Council

Pittsburgh can expect more smog and ozone

From an Article by Reid Frazier, Allegheny Front, September 1, 2020

Pollution levels in American cities have fallen in the decades since the passage of clean air laws in the 1970s. And even though cars and factories are emitting less, days with high smog might increase in the years to come. The reason: climate change.

David Michuk is 29 and suffers with asthma

He called his doctor and got medications to keep his breathing passageways open. Even with the medicines, breathing has been difficult, particularly on hot days.

“I walk out of my house and it’s like, you just walk into this wall of heat and humidity and it knocks the breath out of you,” said Michuk, who grew up near Johnstown, and lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills. “It’s a scary thing to be out, especially to be younger and be out and trying to just live a normal active life, and you can’t because the air is just killing you.”

One reason why it might be hard for him and others with asthma to breathe? Hot days produce a type of air pollution called ozone, or smog.

High Smog Days Could Be Doubled By Climate Change

Pollution levels in American cities have fallen in the decades since the passage of clean air laws in the 1970s. And even though cars and factories are cleaner than they’ve ever been, scientists predict that the success the U.S. has had in lowering ozone pollution is in jeopardy simply because the world is getting hotter.

That success is because regulations have forced American industry to clean up, scientists say. “We have made a lot of progress,” said Edson Severnini, an associate professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “You’ll see the graphs and you feel like, ‘Oh, my God, something good has happened.’ ”

But that progress could be upended by climate change, he said. Severnini said ozone starts to really spike above 30 degrees Celsius — or 86 degrees Fahrenheit. He said we’ve already seen the number of hot days increase since 1980. And the number of days when cities in the U.S. reach 86 degrees is anticipated to double by 2050 because of climate change.

“So you can imagine that by midcentury, which is not far from now, you’re going to have very large levels” of ozone, he said.

Asthma Increases When Ozone Increases

Ozone is an irritant inside the lungs and can trigger or worsen asthma attacks, said Deborah Gentile, an allergy and asthma specialist with East Suburban Pediatrics and Allergy and Asthma Wellness Centers in Pittsburgh. She is Michuk’s doctor.

When it contacts the inside of the airways, it causes inflammation and swelling, and the passageway constricts. “So it’s very difficult to move air in and out,” Gentile said. She’s had plenty of patients this summer with breathing problems, during what would be a normally quiet period between allergy seasons.

This coincides with a spike in bad air quality days, when pollution levels will make it hard to breathe for people in certain, vulnerable groups, like those with breathing conditions. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has had nearly the same number of air quality action days already this year as it had in all of 2019.

The agency says that’s because it’s been a hot summer — July was 4.7 degrees hotter than normal in Pittsburgh, according to the National Weather Service.

Heat and Air Pollution Creates Ozone

And heat is perfect for creating ozone, which doesn’t come right out of tailpipes or smokestacks. Instead, it’s formed in the atmosphere when sunlight hits two types of pollution — volatile organic compounds, emitted by things like paint and gasoline fumes, and nitrogen oxides, which are created by fossil fuel combustion in cars, factories and power plants.

Heat waves, which have been on the increase in the U.S., can speed up the process, said Ted Russell, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Tech.

One reason why is gasoline and other volatile materials will evaporate pollutants into the atmosphere faster on hot days.“Just like water evaporates faster. But gasoline (evaporates) even faster still,” he says. “And paints, on a hot day, they dry faster.”

Another reason why ozone formation increases in the heat: plants and bacteria release some of the volatile gases needed to form ozone. When it gets hot, they release more of them, Russell said. “You’ve also got microbes in the ground that become more active on hot days,” he said.

Urban Heat Islands Mean More Smog

To keep smog below dangerous levels in a hotter world, scientists say, we will probably have to reduce pollution from sources like cars and factories even further. A recent study found that unless climate change is slowed down, there will be an average of 5.7 extra high-ozone days in the U.S. by midcentury.

To make matters worse, cities around the world are growing, supercharging the creation of ozone through the “urban heat island,” said Chandana Mitra, associate professor of geosciences at Auburn University. During heat waves, concrete-packed cities can be 10 to 15 degrees hotter than their surrounding countrysides.

“So more heat, more human activity, more growth in urban areas equals more ozone being created,” Mitra says. There’s a way to limit climate change and the heat it brings, Mitra says, but it’s not going to be easy: lower our greenhouse gas emissions.

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See also: Leader At Environmental Watchdog Group GASP Recommends People Stay Inside Amid Unhealthy Air In Allegheny Co. – Paul Martino, CBS News 2 (KDKA Pittsburgh), July 9, 2020

Fire & Explosions Rock Oil Well Pad in Windsor, Colorado

From a Commentary by Wendell Bradley, PhD Physicist, Windsor, Colorado

Regional air quality devices monitor ozone via probes on towers. They show that Windsor has been out of ozone compliance since 2008, thus has been under a long term health threat.

Windsor’s over-the-limit amount of ozone derives from industrial oil development permitted within its residential neighborhoods.

Windsor’s offending ozone is a decay product of oil-derived Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) of which benzene is the most toxic. There is no safe level of benzene. It attacks every organ in one’s body and causes cancer.

On December 22, 2017, a leaking valve at Windsor’s Stromberger oil-well pad led to a fire and several explosions that threatened health and safety for the entire Town and its surrounding region.

The pad’s escaping methane gas and benzene vapors explosively caught fire. This can happen for methane concentrations in air between 4 and 14 percent, less for benzene.

Leaking methane, during atmospheric inversions, can creep into municipal areas until it ignites and causes an explosion. A natural gas tanker-ship on Lake Erie leaked methane gas into Cleveland, Ohio where it collected, then exploded destroying approximately one square mile of that city.

Apparently, given the atmospheric inversion on the night of Windsor’s pad explosion, Windsor was in danger of creep and devastating explosion, had the gas not burned on site.

Ordinarily fugitive natural gas (mostly methane), being lighter than air, rises whilst decaying into ozone, and finally dissipates without explosion. Methane is odorless, colorless, tasteless, and nontoxic.

The benzene component of a pad’s gas leak, however, is heavier than air. As a consequence, benzene (highly toxic and also explosive) collects in lower lying areas where it may remain for days, undetected, finally decaying into ozone.

The main reason oil industry personnel wear hazmat suits with breathing devices upon arrival at uncontrolled gas leaks on well pads (as they did at Windsor’s Ochsner blowout, 2013) is to avoid immediate benzene poisoning.

Windsor Severance Fire Rescue (WSFR) personnel should know the benzene levels at any oil pad’s leak before entering the site unmasked. Benzene levels will not be measured by the pad’s operator and likely will be extremely high.

Also, prohibitive benzene levels cannot be determined by the ‘big picture’ readings of a VOC meter.

The most efficient, economic way to test for a benzene determination of pad-entry safety is via deployment of dreagger tubes. Later measurement for benzene safety in the pad’s surrounding areas will be tricky and difficult because of its creep and collected concentrations into low lying areas.

Due to the separation and creep of benzene from the larger methane volumes, VOC metering will not provide adequate public protections.

Since it has been amply demonstrated that adequate public health protections and safety cannot be provided in municipal areas for ubiquitous, ongoing well pad negligence leading to highly dangerous releases by any of the means under state regulation (COGCC, CDPHE), it is incumbent on municipal officials to take direct action.

One possibility would be for municipalities to impose a temporary moratorium on all further oil Exploration and Production (E&P) activity until health and safety issues can be assessed and resolved.

Local, temporary moratoria are not precluded by any current state rulings or powers. Indeed, the recent Appellant Court (Martinez) ruling virtually makes local, direct protective actions mandatory as environmental concerns must not get short shrift.

NOOA’s regional ozone monitors detected such high levels of the decay products of Windsor’s negligent, uncontrolled, highly toxic gas releases attending its Stromberger oil pad explosions on Dec 22, 2017 that residents within a 20 mile radius should have been warned, for days, not to go out of doors.

No regional or municipal warnings were given by officials for the impacted areas. Local and Denver news media seemed unaware of any serious dangers. Their coverage seemed routine, assuming the incident was only another minor oil-related accident and fire.

The computer-generated NOOA ozone maps, representing the above monitoring, painted the large, impacted area in dark red. That map’s legend indicates that as long as that coloring persists on the map area residents should, “Stay inside, behind closed doors”.

Dangerous ozone spikes were detected all the way to Boulder.

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UPDATE January 3, 2018: Explosion Victim Recovers; Wife Thanks ‘Whoever Was Watching Over Him’

industrial pollution from ethane cracker chemical plant

From an Article by Remy Samuels, The Pitt News, October 5, 2015

Despite the promise of creating 600 permanent jobs, the ethane cracker plant being built about 40 minutes northwest of Pittsburgh by car continues to face scrutiny from environmental groups.

Shell Chemical Appalachia decided in 2012 that Beaver County would be the site of a new $6 billion plant to manufacture plastics. Shell chose the Beaver County location because of its proximity to natural gas supplies and because the majority of North American polyethylene — the most common plastic — customers are in a 700-mile radius of Pittsburgh.

In a statement published on its website, Shell said it expects to employ around 6,000 people for the facility’s construction, support 600 permanent employees and create an economic boom in Southwestern PA.

The plan to build the plant — dubbed a cracker plant because it takes oil and gas and “cracks” it into smaller molecules to produce ethylene, a building block for plastic — concerns environmentalists who say this plant will emit excessive pollution, which will increase Pittsburgh’s already high pollution levels. In the American Lung Association’s 2017 report, Pittsburgh ranked eighth for annual particle pollution out of 184 metropolitan areas.

Junior Sarah Grguras — a sustainability program assistant in Pitt’s Student Office of Sustainability and an environmental studies and ecology and evolution double major — is familiar with current and historical air pollution issues in Pittsburgh. She said pollution from the plant is going to diminish Pittsburgh’s air quality.

“It’s going to turn Pittsburgh into cancer alley,” Grguras said. “It’s not a long-term help, and it’s not a sustainable industry.”

Following a lawsuit, the Clean Air Council and the Environmental Integrity Project — two environmental advocacy groups — made a deal with Shell to install four “fenceline” monitors, or pollution detectors, along the perimeter of the facility. This will allow the surrounding community to receive updates on a public website if the plant’s emissions are linked to air pollution and exceed a certain threshold.

Based in Philadelphia, Joseph Minott, 63, who is both the executive and chief counsel for Clean Air Council, said even though this deal was made and Shell will install monitors, pollution will still occur.

“What our lawsuit did was try to make sure that the technology they use at the plant is the best technology, so it will minimize the impact on the local citizenry,” Minott said. “But it does not ensure that the plant will not be emitting any pollution.”

When asked specifically about the precautions Shell Oil Company is taking in order to prevent pollution, Ray Fisher, a spokesperson for Shell Oil Company, wrote in an email that the plant will utilize the “best technology available to control emissions along with fenceline monitoring” and Shell will make the data available to the public.

“In addition, we worked with the Commonwealth to offset emissions in a manner that will create better air quality over time,” Fisher wrote in the email. Fisher did not answer specific questions regarding how Shell plans to prevent shale emissions.

Emeritus Professor of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health Bernard Goldstein, 78, is concerned about the impacts the plant will have on the environment and public health. Goldstein explained the plant utilizes the nearby wet gas from Marcellus Shale — a unit of sedimentary rock that contains untapped natural gas reserves — to convert methane and other gases into plastics.

Since the petrochemical plant is so large, it will be subject to both state and federal regulations, including those from the Environmental Protection Agency. Goldstein said he is not as concerned about the plant itself because of this oversight.

“The pollution that I’m most concerned about comes out of the drilling and obtaining the shale gas, which is then used as feedstock for this chemical plant,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein said the construction of the cracker plant will create more sources of shale gas emissions. Goldstein and Evelyn Talbott, an epidemiology professor at Pitt, agree that, because the drill sites are small — but numerous — these sites are not regulated as well.

“When you’ve got 20,000 sites, how could you possibly check them everyday?” Talbott said.

Shell did not respond to questions about the specific types of pollution detectors it will use around the plant and whether these small drilling sites can produce additional shale emissions.

The EPA has standards that regulate six different air pollutants. Talbott said ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are two pollutants that the plant could potentially emit, which could lead to health problems.

“Ozone … is bad for your lungs and is related to asthma. Nitrogen dioxide is also a pulmonary irritant that can cause pulmonary and respiratory disease,” Talbott said. “If you boil water and turn on your gas stove, there is a certain amount of NO2 that is a fossil fuel emission, so in the Marcellus Shale industry there’s bound to be nitrogen dioxide.”

From an economic standpoint, companies such as Marcellus Shale Coalition see this project as a game changer. President of Marcellus Shale Coalition, David Spigelmyer, released a statement June 7, 2016, saying that Shell’s decision to build the plant is “welcomed news.” The Pitt News called the Marcellus Shale Coalition several times and did not receive a response over the course of four business days.

However, environmentalists Grguras and Minott said there are other ways to create jobs without harming the earth. They said evidence supports more long-term jobs will be with green energy — such as solar, wind and geothermal.

“The green economy, where other countries are way ahead of us, produces far less pollution, employs more people and is more sustainable,” Minott said. “We seem stuck on fossil fuels in Pennsylvania.”

Many are worried about the fate of Pittsburgh’s air, but at the same time, many see the promise of jobs as a positive outcome.

“It’s a trade-off,” Talbott said. “Everyone wants jobs and for our economy to flourish, but I think there’s a lot of concern by environmental groups that the pollution is not going to be curbed and it could be a problem.”

Houston Residents Get Asthma

Houston is preview to Shell’s proposed Beaver County cracker plant?

Allegheny Front, October 25, 2013

HOUSTON ­­– The largest chemical hub in the Americas courses through this city in a seemingly unending line of plants that produce about a quarter of the country’s petrochemicals. These plants have helped fuel the city’s economic rise. But they also have added to its poor air quality, with emissions that have been linked to asthma, cancer, and heart attacks.

In recent years, Houston has found ways to reduce air pollution, in part by zeroing in on chemical plant emissions. Experts say Houston’s experience may show others how to keep chemical emissions down, even as the industry expands along the Gulf Coast, and possibly into Pennsylvania.

From Pennsylvania to Texas, the chemical industry is building new plants to take advantage of vast deposits of natural gas opened up by the fracking boom. Shell Chemical is eyeing building an ethane cracker in Monaca in Beaver County. The plant would take ethane from the Marcellus shale and convert it into ethylene—a key building block for plastics and chemicals—through the ‘cracking’ process.

Shell’s Pennsylvania cracker would be northwest of Pittsburgh, in a region that already fails federal air quality standards for ozone and other pollutants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Ozone is an oxidant that can burn lung tissue, aggravate asthma and increase susceptibility to respiratory illnesses like pneumonia and bronchitis, according to the agency.

Ozone is formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) mix with other forms of pollution in the presence of sunlight. Air quality experts say the biggest impact a cracker plant would have in Pittsburgh would be through releases of VOCs.

The company has said differences in local permitting rules and the type of raw materials it would use make it hard to project what kinds of emissions a Pennsylvania cracker would produce. The company has used Shell’s Norco plant in Louisiana in the past as a reference when it proposed its Pennsylvania cracker. Norco produces roughly twice the VOCs of U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke works, currently the highest emitter in Southwestern Pennsylvania, according to the EPA.

Shell recently agreed to spend $115 million to clean up emissions at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery and ethylene plant near Houston after the Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging the plant’s flares were emitting improper amounts of VOCs and cancer­-causing pollutants.

Joe Osborne of the Group Against Smog and Pollution, an environmental advocacy group in Pittsburgh, said the Beaver County plant would likely be a major source of new pollution, with more than 50 tons per year of VOCs and 100 tons of nitrogen oxides, another key component of ozone, though he has yet to see any estimates from the company.

“I expect it will be a large source of ozone precursors, and this would be located in an area that’s already failing to meet federal health-­based standards for ozone,” he said.

Looking to Houston

One study linked high ozone incidents to increased instances of cardiac arrest in Houston; others have found high rates of asthma and childhood leukemia in neighborhoods near the chemical industry.

Adding difficulty to the issue is the fact that Houston has no zoning laws, which means some residents live across the street from huge refineries and chemical plants. But in the last decade, Houston’s air has improved, in part because regulators have targeted the petrochemical industry.

The city’s air quality nadir was in 1999. “We were the capital of ozone,” says Elizabeth Hendler, a former state regulator who now works as an environmental consultant to industry. In that year, Houston surpassed Los Angeles as having the highest ozone levels in America. “That was kind of a wake­up call,” Hendler said.

Not long afterward, in 2003, Toyota decided against locating a plant in the region because of the city’s air. Hendler says the number of air monitors in Houston doubled in a few years.

The state undertook a wide-­ranging series of studies. Aircraft from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flew over the ship channel with special emissions-­sensing equipment.

They found big leaks at the plants. The worst were from chemical plants with ‘crackers’ that made ethylene and propylene, two basic building blocks of plastic.

“The plants were having 1,000 pound releases, 5,000 pound releases, 20,000 pound releases, in one case 200,000 pound releases,” said Harvey Jeffries, a retired University of North Carolina chemist who studied Houston’s air and advised business and research groups on Houston’s air problems.

Ethylene and propylene—the two main products made in a cracker— ­are considered ‘highly reactive’ VOCs, meaning they can create large plumes of ozone in a matter of hours under the right conditions.

“When that stuff gets emitted in the daytime—it cooks up the highest amount of ozone you’ve ever seen,” Jeffries said.

When they looked at Houston’s industrial corridor, scientists realized chemical plants had been chronically under­-reporting their emissions. A lot of this pollution was ‘fugitive’ emissions—leaks from valves, flanges, tiny holes in pipes, and incomplete combustion of waste gasses in the plants’ flares.

To get the city’s air under federal air pollution limits, Texas implemented a suite of environmental reforms. The state created special limits on emissions of highly reactive VOCs like propylene and ethylene, and implemented a cap­-and-­trade program for Houston’s petrochemical plants.

What happened next?  “Well, ozone went down—­­a lot,” Hendler said. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality estimates the city’s ozone levels have decreased about 20 percent since 2001.

The number of days when the air in Houston exceeds the EPA’s current eight­-hour average for ozone of 75 parts per billion went from around 100 a year in 2005 to under 35 days in 2012. Emissions of other pollutants, including carcinogenic chemicals released in petrochemical manufacturing, also decreased.

Progress, but no cure

In spite of recent strides, Houston still struggles with air quality. The city will see huge expansions of its petrochemical sector in the next few years, thanks to the fracking boom. Several new or expanded ethane crackers are slated to go online to take advantage of cheap natural gas. This has some clean air advocates worried.

“We’ve made significant progress,” said Larry Soward, a former regulator for the Texas commission and president of Air Alliance Houston. “But let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much. So far we have not met a single (federal) standard for ozone ­­and we’re talking about adding all these new pollution sources.”

Steve Smith, technical advisor to the industry­-funded Houston Regional Monitoring Network, which operates around a dozen air pollution monitoring stations around the city, says the key to keeping emissions low is simple: Keep an eye on it. “If you monitor, it will get better,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened here.”

Smith’s group tests for more than 150 pollutants to help oil, gas and petrochemical businesses meet federal air quality mandates. “We set up a network early on, where if we saw a value too high, we sent out a notice to the companies, saying ‘Look at what’s happening. See if you have something that’s going on.’”

The American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2012 report released on April 25 finds that in America’s most polluted cities, air quality was at its cleanest since the organization’s annual report began 13 years ago. This year’s report details the trend that standards set under the Clean Air Act to cleanup major air pollution sources—including coal-fired power plants, diesel engines and SUVs—are working to drastically cut ozone (smog) and particle pollution (soot) from the air we breathe. Despite this progress, unhealthy levels of air pollution still exist and in some parts of the country worsened.

The job of cleaning the air is not finished. More than 40 percent of people in the U.S. live in areas where air pollution continues to threaten their health. That means more than 127 million people are living in counties with dangerous levels of either ozone or particle pollution that can cause wheezing and coughing, asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death. Those at greatest risk from air pollution include infants, children, older adults, anyone with lung diseases like asthma, people with heart disease or diabetes, people with low incomes and anyone who works or exercises outdoors.

The Lung Association’s annual air quality report grades cities and counties based, in part, on the color-coded Air Quality Index developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alert the public to daily unhealthy air conditions. The 13th annual report uses the most recent, quality-controlled EPA data collected from 2008 through 2010 from official monitors for ozone and particle pollution, the two most widespread types of air pollution. Counties are graded for ozone, year-round particle pollution and short-term particle pollution levels. The report also uses EPA’s calculations for year-round particle levels.

Major improvements were seen in 18 of the 25 cities most polluted by ozone, including Los Angeles, which had the lowest smog levels since the report was first published in 2000. Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were among 17 of the 25 cities most polluted by annual particle pollution that experienced their cleanest years yet. Four cities—Pittsburgh, San Diego, Philadelphia and Visalia, Calif., had their lowest-ever, short-term particle pollution level. For the first time, Birmingham, Ala., Detroit, Mich., and York, Pa., dropped completely off the report’s 25 most-polluted cities lists. Santa Fe, N.M., ranked as the cleanest city in the nation.

Meanwhile, State of the Air 2012 finds that nearly four out of 10 people in the U.S. live in counties that received an F for air quality because of unhealthy levels of ozone air pollution, which can cause health problems that day, and even days after. When inhaled, ozone irritates the lungs, like a bad sunburn, and can cause wheezing, coughing, asthma attacks and can shorten life.

The report also finds that nearly 50 million Americans live in counties with too many unhealthy spikes in particle pollution levels, and nearly six million people live in areas with unhealthy year-round levels of particle pollution. Particle pollution is the most dangerous and deadly widespread air pollutant in America. This noxious mix of microscopic bits of ash, soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols can lead to early death, heart attacks, strokes and emergency room visits. Only eight counties received a failing grade for year-round particle pollution, further evidence of the continuing improvement even since last year’s report.

Although these air quality improvements clearly result from standards put into place under the Clean Air Act, big polluters and some members of Congress continue to propose to dismantle the law. Recent proposals in the Congress have included delaying implementation and blocking enforcement of parts of the law, and limiting EPA’s ability to consider all of the scientific evidence regarding the harm to public health. These challenges come despite EPA’s estimate that cutting air pollution through the Clean Air Act will prevent at least 230,000 deaths and save $2 trillion annually by 2020.

In the list of the Nation’s Most Polluted Cities, the Pittsburgh area ranks 6^th in most polluted year-round by “particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns” and 6^th most polluted short-term (24-hour) by “particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns.”

To see how your community ranks in State of the Air 2012, to learn how to protect yourself and your family from air pollution, and to join the fight for healthy air, visit www.stateoftheair.org.

For more information, click here.

Source: American Lung Association