March 31, 2026
The residents of Westmoreland and Fayette counties live in two of the cleanest counties in the U.S. when it comes to microscopic soot pollution, according to the American Lung Association (ALA).
Despite this assessment, the ALA also says residents of those counties are facing health risks and their communities deserve an “F” grade because their communities are overwhelmed with PM2.5 soot.
This will be the conclusion of the upcoming 2026 State of the Air report, where this kind of contradiction passes as serious analysis by the ALA. Any report that can describe the same counties as having the cleanest air in the country while also claiming they are among those with some of the dirtiest air in the country is not serious science but created to grab headlines.
The State of the Air report each year misleads about real-life conditions by making up its own grading criteria and disregarding federal Clean Air Act standards to determine which areas it considers polluted and which ones are not.
And it overhypes the region’s PM2.5 threat by using a single air monitor in Allegheny County to hang a failing grade to a 13-county metro area that is larger in land area than the state of New Jersey.
The 2026 report is not out yet, but the ALA’s own methodology makes it easy to preview exactly how it will misrepresent the region’s PM2.5 levels.
PM2.5 particles are tiny — about 30 of them stacked together equal the thickness of a human hair — and they can get deep into the lungs and bloodstream. They have been linked to health problems including heart and lung disease, breathing difficulty, and aggravated asthma.1
The State of the Air report will note that in Fayette and Westmoreland counties, not a single day from 2022 through 2024 saw 24-hour PM2.5 levels reach what the EPA considers “unhealthy.” Those counties will be on the ALA’s list of “Cleanest Counties for Short-Term Particle Pollution (Daily PM2.5).”
But the grade the Lung Association will hype in its press release is the “F” grade that it will place on the entire Pittsburgh-Weirton-Steubenville metro area2 based soley on the PM2.5 levels in Allegheny County.
The ALA will claim that the 2.7 million people in those 13 counties – including those in clean Westmoreland and Fayette – are at health risk from daily PM2.5 pollution. Allegheny County’s PM2.5 levels are also likely to place the region on the list of “25 Cities Most Polluted by Daily PM” as it was in the 2025 report.
That F grade is seriously misleading.
Allegheny County complies with the EPA’s daily PM2.5 rule, with the county’s level more than 10 percent below the standard. But that performance is not good enough for the American Lung Association.
The same misleading dynamic will show up with the year-round PM2.5 levels, which the ALA grades as Pass/Fail, depending on whether an area meets the EPA’s annual standard.
Every county in the 13-county region meets the Clean Air Act standard except for Allegheny.
But his is how the Lung Association will grade the so-called “city” of Pittsburgh-Weirton-Steubenville:
The case of Mercer County highlights this grading issue. As recently as the 2024 State of the Air report the residents of Mercer County were apparently safe enough from air pollution, receiving a C grade for PM2.5 levels. But in 2023 the federal Office of Management and Budget decided to add Mercer County to the newly renamed “Pittsburgh-Weirton-Steubenville PA-OH-WV Combined Statistical Area.” That opened the door for the ALA to claim the county’s 110,000 residents are now “at risk” because of air pollution three counties away.
Working towards solutions and practices that can continue to improve our environment are difficult when reports like the ALA’s State of the Air Report use questionable methodology that inflates the apparent size of the problem and stretches the number of people supposedly at risk. It may make for greater shock value and publicity but truly is a distraction from efforts to improve.
The fact is that PM2.5 levels have been falling for years, both nationally and in the Pittsburgh region, thanks in large part to the increased use of natural gas, less coal, and cleaner industrial practices. The air in the Pittsburgh region is cleaner than at any time since the Industrial Revolution. And as the Pittsburgh Works Together report Clearing the Air 6.0 documented, its pollution levels are pretty typical for a big-city metro area – better than some places, worse than others.
That’s the real state of the air.
Ken Zapinski
412-352-4364; ken@pghworks.com
