Why Is Eugene Air Quality Bad Today - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

Fire agencies battle the Holiday Farm Fire in September 2020.

A report released Thursday ranks the kind of air pollution associated with smoke in Eugene-Springfield as among the worst in the nation, part of a trend in western cities now more regularly suffering from wildfires and droughts.

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The American Lung Association’s 2022 “State of the Air” report places Eugene-Springfield in the top 25 cities most polluted by particulate matter, a broad category of inhalable particles that includes smoke and dust. The data in the report covers 2018-2020, active years for wildfire across the West, including the 2020 Labor Day fires.

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“Particulate matter is the main pollutant for the Pacific Northwest,” said American Lung Association Senior Director of Advocacy Carrie Nyssen. “The two main reasons are wildfire smoke and people burning wood to keep warm.”

The 2022 “State of the Air” report found more than 40% of Americans are living in places with failing grades for air pollution, amounting to about 2.1 million more Americans than in previous reports. In the years the report covers, Americans experienced more “very unhealthy” and “hazardous” air quality days than any since the reporting began.

Eugene-Springfield ranked as the No. 15 city most polluted by daily particulate matter, or PM, a grade which monitors spikes in poor air quality. The 2021 report, using 2017-19 data, ranked Eugene-Springfield the No. 19 most polluted city by daily PM.

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Only one city on the 2022 list, Pittsburgh, is not in the western United States. Of the other cities on the list, 11 are in California, nine are in the Pacific Northwest and four are in the Southwest, areas that commonly suffered from wildfire smoke.

On an additional list for cities most polluted by annual particulate matter, Eugene-Springfield shared the No. 18 rank with McAllen-Edinburg, Texas, and the Philadelphia-Reading-Camden combined statistical area of the Mid-Atlantic. Eugene-Springfield in the 2021 report was ranked No. 19 on that list, which includes cities that are more evenly distributed throughout the country.

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But the Eugene-Springfield area also ranked among the cleanest cities when it comes to ozone pollution, typically associated with car traffic. The Los Angeles-Long Beach, California, area ranked as the city most polluted by ozone.

The 2022 report gave Lane County an “F” grade for high PM pollution days between 2018-20 because there were 18 days with air quality somewhere between being unhealthy for sensitive groups and being hazardous for everyone.

Using the American Lung Association’s grading mechanism, the Lane Regional Air Quality Agency found the county would have received a “B” grade without wildfire smoke, according to LRAPA spokesman Travis Knudsen.

Poor air quality days not associated with wildfire smoke between 2018-20 are related to wood chimney smoke in Oakridge.

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“It just emphasizes the impact wildfires are having on communities in Lane County,” Knudsen said.

For the years covered in the report, wildfire smoke in Lane County was most extreme during the Holiday Farm Fire, one of the 2020 Labor Day fires which altogether burned more than 1 million acres in Oregon. The Holiday Farm Fire scorched about 174,000 acres of the McKenzie River Valley and covered Eugene-Springfield in thick smoke for days.

“Lane County has never seen air quality at that level or worse than at that level,” Knudsen said.