The “State of the Air” 2026 report “finds that even after decades of successful efforts to reduce sources of air pollution, 44% of Americans—152.3 million people—are living in places that get failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. We found that nearly half of American children (46%, or 33.5 million people under the age of 18) live in counties that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. Ten percent of children (7.3 million people under age 18) live in counties with failing grades for all three measures. Infants, children and teens are especially vulnerable to the health harms of breathing air pollution. Their lungs are still developing, they breathe more air for their body size than adults, and they frequently spend more time outdoors…The “State of the Air” report looks at two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants: fine particles and ozone. The air quality data used in the report are collected at official monitoring sites across the United States by federal, state, local and Tribal governments. The Lung Association calculates values reflecting the air pollution problem and assigns grades for daily and long-term measures of particle pollution and daily measures of ozone. Those values are also used to rank cities (metropolitan areas) and counties. This year’s report presents data from 2022, 2023 and 2024, the most recent three years of publicly available, quality-assured nationwide air pollution data.

• See About This Report for more detail about the methodology for data collection and analysis.”
• See also The Clean Air Crisis is Here