Pittsburgh’s air was unsafe to breathe for three months in 2018, report says

​Some modest regional improvement

In 2018, Pittsburgh had 39 days in which half or more monitoring locations reported elevated levels of ozone pollution and 72 days with elevated levels of particulate matter pollution, according to the report. In 2016, there were 46 days with elevated ozone pollution and 97 days with elevated particulate matter pollution.

“It’s hard to draw an overarching trend from just two years of data on unhealthy air days,” Barber said. “We do know that in general over the past several decades, the trend has been toward improvements in air quality, though it has often been a little slower in Pittsburgh than the rest of the country.”

National numbers worsen

Nationally, air pollution actually got worse from 2016 to 2018 after seven years of steady improvement, and the United States saw 9,700 premature deaths as a result of air pollution in 2018, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

The PennEnvironment report also notes that levels of air pollution that meet current federal air quality standards can still be harmful to health, especially with prolonged exposure. Research shows increased numbers of premature deaths in people exposed to pollution at levels the EPA considers “good” or “moderate,” and current federal standards are less stringent than those recommended by the World Health Organization.

“Just because we’re seeing some improvement,” Barber said, “that doesn’t mean we can sit back and rest on our laurels. There’s a lot of hard work that needs to be done to clean up the air in the region to protect our health, especially when it comes to curbing industrial pollution.”