Nearly half of American children are breathing in dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, and experts warn that President Donald Trump’s rollbacks to far-reaching protections will make the situation worse.
The American Lung Association’s (ALA) 27th Annual Air Quality Report, released Wednesday, assesses pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone, also known as smog, and annual and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024.
It found that 33.5 million children in the United States (46% under the age of 18) live in areas that received a failing grade on at least one air pollution measure.
The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the United States, live in areas where all three measures are not met.
Will Barrett, ALA’s assistant vice president for national clean air policy, told the Guardian: “Children’s lungs are still developing. They’re breathing in more air for their size. They’re also more active because they play outside. “Children’s exposure to air pollution can therefore contribute to long-term developmental harm to their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risk of respiratory diseases, and other health considerations later in life.” life. ”
The report also found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air quality. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, such as asthma, diabetes, and heart disease.
People of color make up 42.1% of the U.S. population, but 54.2% live in counties with at least one failing score, the report said. They also found that people of color were 2.42 times more likely than whites to live in areas where all three pollution control measures were not in place.
Smog remains the most pervasive pollutant affecting Americans’ health. Between 2022 and 2024, 38% of the U.S. population, or approximately 129.1 million people, was exposed to levels of ozone that endangered their health. This is the highest number recorded in the ALA report in the past six years and is an increase of 3.9 million people from the previous year.
The report says several factors are contributing to these unhealthy pollution levels, including extreme heat, drought, and wildfires, which are increasing the proportion of the population exposed to harmful ozone.
Areas most affected by high ozone levels include southwestern states from California to Texas and much of the Midwest. This is primarily due to smoke from wildfires that started in Canada in 2023 entering the United States, as well as high temperatures and weather patterns that promoted ozone formation in 2023 and 2024, especially in southern states.
More broadly, the report found that climate change is exacerbating ozone pollution by increasing emissions of precursors and creating atmospheric conditions such as higher temperatures and lower wind speeds that allow pollutants to accumulate and ozone to form.
The report also highlighted that data centers are a growing source of air pollution. In recent years, data centers have consumed approximately 4.4% of the total electricity in the United States, and this number is likely to increase to 12% within the next decade.
The impact is primarily due to reliance on the region’s electricity grid, where fossil fuels such as methane gas and coal still account for the majority of electricity generation, the report said. Additionally, many data centers use dozens of large diesel-powered backup generators that emit carcinogenic particulate matter.
“As the demand for data center expansion continues to grow, we need to focus on clean, renewable energy sources that are additive and off-grid,” Barrett said.
He also pointed to a series of current environmental setbacks by the Environmental Protection Agency, warning that they are putting air quality at greater risk.
“The value of children’s health is being disrespected by this EPA as it weakens, delays, and eliminates important health protections,” he said, pointing to reversals such as “complying deadlines for particulate pollution standards, repealing vehicle standards, eliminating EPA’s responsibility to protect health from climate pollution, and even allowing increased emissions of pollutants from oil and gas facilities.” He also cited mercury, a toxic air pollutant emitted by coal-fired power plants, as a major concern.
“[There is] “This is a massive effort by the federal EPA to eliminate health protections while moving away from its mission to protect public health,” Barrett added.
Since returning to power last year, the Trump administration has initiated at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. That includes relaxing regulations for power plants that limit mercury and other harmful air toxics.
Other rollbacks include overturning limits on major sources of air pollution, disbanding the EPA Advisory Committee on Air Quality, and eliminating the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting particulate matter and ozone while calculating costs to companies.
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