{"id":9269,"date":"2012-04-25T11:59:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T16:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=9269"},"modified":"2012-04-25T12:00:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T17:00:19","slug":"houston-air-quality-improving-but-still-dirty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/04\/25\/houston-air-quality-improving-but-still-dirty\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Air Quality Improving, But Still Dirty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Infographic by American Lung Association<\/p>

A new report says Houston's air is getting cleaner, but remains relatively dirty.<\/p><\/div>\n

The winds of change are cleaner than usual in Texas\u2019 biggest metropolitan area. According to the American Lung Association\u2019s annual State of the Air 2012<\/a> report, Houston\u2019s air quality index has improved slightly from last year, marking the best levels ever recorded in the city since the association first began\u00a0following\u00a0them thirteen years ago.<\/p>\n

The association grades cities on three major categories<\/a>: ozone, year-round particle and short-term particle.\u00a0 Houston ranked eighth worst<\/a> in ozone pollution (receiving a grade of F) and 23rd<\/sup> worst in year-round particle pollution, but received a commendable B in short-term particle pollution.<\/p>\n

California leads the nation in polluted cities; Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Fresno were the worst offenders.\u00a0The cleanest cities<\/a> in Texas were Brownsville, Amarillo and Laredo.<\/p>\n

The association credits the EPA\u2019s Clean Air Act<\/a> with the improvements in air over the last decade, but more than 127 million Americans are still living in areas with harmful air quality<\/a>, according to an American Lung Association press release.<\/p>\n

David Barer is an intern with StateImpact Texas.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The winds of change are cleaner than usual in Texas\u2019 biggest metropolitan area. According to the American Lung Association\u2019s annual State of the Air 2012 report, Houston\u2019s air quality index has improved slightly from last year, marking the best levels ever recorded in the city since the association first began\u00a0following\u00a0them thirteen years ago. The association […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":9271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[84,96,39],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9274,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9269\/revisions\/9274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}