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Clearing the Air in Spokane
Why it matters - With every breath you take, your lungs are exposed to the world around you, filtering over 8,000 liters of air a day. Breathing dirty air hurts the body both by inflaming and destroying lung tissue and by weakening the lungs' defenses against contaminants and infection.
Over 500,000 people in Washington state have lung disease. For them, air pollution—even at moderate levels—may mean discomfort, limited activities, increased use of medications, more frequent visits to doctors, and even a shortened life.
Even otherwise healthy people can suffer when pollution levels are high. Symptoms may include watery eyes, runny nose, coughing and wheezing. Breathing dirty air is especially hard on the elderly, pregnant women, as well as young children and infants whose lungs are still developing.
How we're doing - Air quality in our region and across the United States has dramatically improved since the 1970s and 1980s. After decades of failing national, health based air quality standards, in 2005 the Spokane area was officially declared in attainment of all federal, health-based air pollution standards by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In the Spokane region, fine particle pollution, air toxics and ozone are our greatest air quality concerns. These pollutants pose a range of health impacts – such as respiratory ailments, heart disease and cancer – which is why we support and implement programs and policies designed to reduce their emissions, and our risk of exposure to them.
Air Quality Challenges - Although our air has significantly improved we still have plenty of work to do if we are to continue this progress. As we look ahead to 2011 and beyond, our challenges include:
- Meeting more stringent and health protective air quality standards for fine particulate and ground-level ozone being developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Enacting a new odor and nuisance regulation to protect the public's right to enjoyment of life and property
- Implementing new federal programs to protect the public from hazardous air pollutants
- Maintaining adequate program funding to meet these and other challenges.
Spokane Air Quality Reports and Maps - Historic trends, air quality reports, emissions inventories, data summaries, air quality-related maps.
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