The dirt on Charlotte air: Region fails at particle pollution

HERBERT L. WHITE | THE CHARLOTTE POST

The Charlotte region earned a failing grade on particle pollution in the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report.

The Charlotte region has some of North Carolina’s dirtiest air, according to a national survey.

According to the American Lung Association's 2025 "State of the Air" report, the Charlotte region, which includes 3.3 million people – 1.3 million of them racial minorities – earned a failing grade in particle pollution. The report studied air quality data from 2021-23.

Poor air quality impacts cardiopulmonary health, with 256,000 adults and 82,600 children in the region suffering from asthma and another 248,730 with cardiovascular disease and 177,500 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease like bronchitis or emphysema.

The 26th annual study found nearly half of the U.S. population breathes unhealthy levels of air pollution. The report finds that 156 million people (46%) live in areas that received an "F" grade for either ozone or particle pollution, a significant increase of 25 million from last year's report. Extreme heat and wildfires – prompted by climate change – contributed to worse air quality.

"Families across the U.S. are dealing with the health impacts of air pollution every day, and extreme heat and wildfires are making it worse. Air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick, and leading to low birth weight in babies. This year's report shows the dramatic impact that air pollution has on a growing number of people," said Harold Wimmer, the Lung Association’s president and CEO. "Even as more people are breathing unhealthy air, the federal staff, programs and policies that are supposed to be cleaning up pollution are facing rollbacks, restructuring and funding challenges.”

Although people of color make up 41.2% of the nation’s population, they are 51.2% of the population living in counties with at least one failing grade for air quality. Black communities remain disproportionately affected by unhealthy air, being one and a half times more likely to live in areas with failing grades for all three measures of air pollution.

The report grades exposure to ground-level ozone air pollution, euphemistically referred to as smog, as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, or soot, over three years.

The review found that 42.5 million people live in areas with failing grades for all three pollution measures. People of color are more than twice as likely as their white peers to live in a neighborhood with failing grades on all three pollution measures. Black people, for instance, are 1.5 times more likely than their white peers to live in such communities, which increases their risk of developing chronic health impacts. Hispanic people are nearly three times as likely.  

"Black Americans more frequently live with one or more chronic conditions, such as asthma, heart disease or diabetes, which puts us at even greater risk for the health effects of unhealthy air," said Cedric Rutland M.D., an internal medicine, pulmonary and critical care doctor, "Both ozone and particle pollution can lead to premature death and other serious health issues, such as asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, preterm births and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also lead to lung cancer.”

Charlotte’s poor air quality is far from the nation’s worst. Seven of the 10 worst counties ozone and air pollution are in California, along with one each from Arizona, Colorado and Texas.
 

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