No Escape: Can You Really Ever "Get Away" from the Smog? A Midsummer Look at Ozone Smog in 1999
File Size: 229 KBAs we head into the final stretch of summer, there is No Escape from health-threatening ozone smog. During August millions of Americans flee hot, congested urban areas for vacation spots to breathe clean air and see the sights. Thousands of kids head for summer camps to enjoy nature and have a healthy outdoor experience. However, whether you stay at home, head out to favorite vacation spots, or go to summer camp, we face unhealthy ozone smog levels wherever we turn.
Because of the increasing spread of the air pollution problem and the drift of air pollution on wind currents, today many of the nations most popular summer destinations provide no refuge. For example, you expect to breathe dirty air in places like New York City or Atlanta, Georgia but Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the Cape Cod National Seashore, the Jersey shore, and Indiana Dunes are being hard hit as well. In some cases, the number of dirty air days is even higher than the urban areas nearby.
With preliminary and incomplete data available, it appears that 32 states and the District of Columbia have exceeded the 8-hour ozone standard on at least 85 days from April 1 to July 25. The federal ozone standard has been exceeded 2,743 times over this period of time.
Last summer, the most recent year for which we have a complete set of summer ozone smog data, Acadia National Park in downeast Maine over 280 miles from the nearest large city had a similar number of ozone exceedence days as the Boston or New York metropolitan areas. Moreover, looking at the U.S. Environmental Protections measure of whether air quality stan- dards have been violated (i.e., the 4th highest eight-hour ozone average concentration), ozone concentrations in Acadia at times are every bit as high as those in New York or Boston. Simi- larly, residents of Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, and Chattanooga could not find refuge from summer ozone levels in Great Smoky Mountains National Park where both the ozone level and number of exceedence days matched that in those southeastern cities. In the Midwest, people headed out from Chicago and Milwaukee to the Lake Michigan destinations of Indiana Dunes and Door County, Wisconsin have also found unhealthy ozone levels waiting for them.
About midway through the summer, the national data indicates:
- 13 states have experienced 20 or more dirty air days this summer alone: Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
- 10 states have exceeded the 8-hour standard more than 100 times: Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
- There have only been 14 days since May 1 when at least one state has not exceeded the 8-hour ozone standard: 8 days in May, 2 days in June and 4 days in July so far.
- The one-hour ozone standard has been exceeded ___ times on ___ days this summer as well.
- So far, there are at least 6 more days of unhealthy air quality and 543 exceedances than this point last year.
In short, ozone smog is likely everywhere you live, and everywhere you want to be. There is no escaping the smog in large parts of the nation. The best way to reduce smog in vacation spots is to reduce pollution in our urban areas and the less populated areas as well. We all need to work together to reduce the threat of air pollution by cleaning up cars, trucks, fuels, and power plants, the biggest sources of ozone smog. With national solutions, we can solve this national problem.
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