16 Illinois Counties Receive Failing Air-Quality Grades

A report by the American Lung Association gave more than a dozen counties in Illinois failing air-quality grades.

The report, “State of Air 2016,” uses 2012-14 data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System to rank which cities and counties across the country have the highest and lowest levels of ozone and particle pollution.

Just 23 of Illinois’ 102 counties have air-quality monitors, and of those that do, 16 earned an “F” for having too many days with unhealthy levels of ozone pollution. However, particle pollutant data for Illinois is missing because samples collected by the EPA weren’t suitable for analysis and the agency lacked the resources to conduct another test, rendering this year’s report incomplete.

More from the report:

Still missing, however, are particle pollution data from all of Illinois and Florida and most of Tennessee because of problems with data processing in laboratories and other data issues. This means that no one knows if the levels of particle pollution were unhealthy in many cities that have historic problems with particle pollution, including Chicago and St. Louis.

While the missing data and the small percentage of counties that have air-quality monitors make it difficult to gauge the full scope of air pollution in Illinois, Mike Kolleng, manager of the Healthy Air Campaign at the American Lung Association in Illinois, told the Public News Service the state’s overall levels of ozone pollution has been slowly declining over the past three decades.

Nationwide, the Chicagoland area ranked No. 21 out of the 197 most polluted metropolitan areas listed in the report.

Here are the 16 counties in Illinois that received a failing grade for ozone pollution. The current national air quality standard for ozone is 70 parts per billion measured over eight hours.

Like what you see here from Reboot Illinois? Then sign up for our daily email to get more great content right to your email.