'State of the Air Report' Finds More Cities With Worsening Pollution

"About four in 10 people in the US live in counties where the air has either more ozone or more particulate pollution than is considered healthy," according to an article by Zoë Schlanger.

Those cities could look to places with clean air for leadership in protecting the air breathed by residents. The "State of the Air" report from the American Lung Association celebrates those cities with the cleanest air, including "a few cities [in the United States] that did not log a single bad-air day at all between 2015 and 2017."

Those places: Bangor, Maine; Burlington-South Burlington, Vermont; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lincoln-Beatrice, Nebraska; Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida; and Wilmington, North Carolina.

Schlanger also shares an additional eight "pretty good" cities that had no spikes in particulate pollution, and had low levels of particulate pollution all year round.

If you're looking for takeaways, a list of key findings from the report, prepared by the American Lung Association, includes an increasing number of high ozone and high particulate days in cities and increasing challenges and risks to human health posed by climate change.