Ocean County Gets An F For Ozone Levels

OCEAN COUNTY, NJ — You might think that Ocean County, with its brisk ocean breezes and lack of heavy industry, would be exempt from air quality problems.

You'd be wrong.

The American Lung Association recently released its "State of the Air 2018" report. Ocean County received an F grade for ozone pollution, as did a number of other counties in the state, including Monmouth.

The report based its findings on the years from 2014 to 2015. Overall, ozone pollution in the United States has increased significantly during that time, compared to the previous report, which looked at 2013-2015.

Climate change, with its record-setting heat, is one of the culprits.

"The spike in ozone demonstrates the public health impact of increased temperatures from the changing climate on the nation's air quality," the report said. "With 2016 marking the second warmest year on record, the higher temperatures provided fuel to increase the formation of ozone from the still under-controlled emissions of the precursor emissions."

To determine the pollution grade, the American Lung Association assigned increasing weights to the days when air pollution levels reached higher ranges. Those were added together, and the weighted average was calculated. Grades were then assigned based on that weighted average. The full methodology can be found by clicking here.

The good news is that Ocean County received a B grade for particles — more commonly called soot — in any 24 hour period and a "Pass" grade for particles on an annual basis.

And the number of high ozone days in the county has dropped 45.1 days since 1996, the report found.

More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties with an unhealthy level of either smog or soot, the study said.

The authors emphasized the need to keep the Clean Air Act intact, funded and enforced — something some lawmakers have targeted for repeal. The study says the number of people exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution increased to nearly 134 million people, up from 125 million in their previous report.

Ozone and particle pollution are associated with premature death, developmental harm, reproductive harm, lung cancer and heart damage, the ALA says.

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.
Photo: Patricia A. Miller