Conoy Township

Smoke bellows out of Brunner Island Steam Electric Station across the Susquehanna River in February 2020. Brunner Island can be seen from just about every turn in Conoy Township, which is in the northwestern part of Lancaster County.

Vehicle exhaust, manufacturing and power plant emissions, wood burning stoves and dust from agricultural activities earned Lancaster County another failing grade in the American Lung Association’s annual assessment of the nation’s air quality.

The main problem, according to the State of the Air report, is the growing number of days on which spikes of small, airborne particles were measured locally.

Particulate pollution is a known threat to human health, and its sources are plentiful in the county, according to Dr. Timothy Craig, a professor of medicine and pediatrics and a specialist in the Division of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

“People move to Lancaster thinking this is great air because it’s all country and a lot of farms,” he said. But he cautioned not to be fooled by the county’s idyllic rural landscape.

Home to a confluence of busy highways, urban and suburban communities and thousands of farms, the county has long been on lists of the worst air quality in the nation. The 2022 report was released today and is based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pollution data from 2018 through 2020, the most recent period for which accurate data is available. The report scores counties on three pollution categories — short-term and long-term particle pollution, and ozone pollution.

Like in previous years, 2022’s report measured more instances of particulate pollution spikes occurring over short-term, 24-hour periods.

“Lancaster County’s short-term particle pollution again got worse in this year’s report, which means there were more unhealthy days,” American Lung officials wrote, comparing the results of this year’s report to 2021.

In the 2022 report, short-term particle pollution was responsible for a weighted average of 5.3 unhealthy days annually, compared to 4.5 in the 2021 report. Anything above an average of 3.2 is considered failing, according to the association’s scale.

The association also assigned the county a letter grade of F for short-term particle pollution for the second year in a row. In a 2020 report, the county was given a C for the same type of pollution, which was Lancaster County’s first passing grade for short-term particle pollution since 2013.

Health threats

Particulate pollution is made up of microscopic solids and liquids floating in the air, including from soot, dust and smoke, and it can also be composed of hundreds of chemicals, multiple experts have said.

In heavily agricultural communities like Lancaster County, tilling, field burning and machinery use are sources of particulate pollution, as is dust kicked up by livestock, studies have found.

Conservation-oriented farming practices — implemented on some Lancaster County farms — can help to contain those pollutants, experts have said.

The State of the Air report also tracks at-risk populations and found that tens of thousands of Lancaster County residents fall in that category.

Breathing in particles can lead to adverse health effects, Craig said. That’s especially true for those high-risk populations, which include people with chronic respiratory illnesses, young children and the elderly, as well as people in poverty or with low incomes, who often live closer to pollution sources, Craig said.

When a person breathes in unhealthy air, particles can irritate the respiratory system, causing inflammation of the lungs, Craig said.

In people with pre-existing respiratory illnesses such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, that inflammation can easily trigger complications, Craig said.

Bad air isn’t only a threat to the respiratory system, said Dr. Alan Peterson, a retired Lancaster County physician, who has long studied the relationship between the environment and health. The particles are so small that they can make their way from the lungs to the bloodstream and eventually the heart, potentially causing issues within the cardiovascular system, he said.

In addition, people exposed to bad air could be more susceptible to complications from other respiratory illnesses and viruses, including COVID-19, Peterson said.

Being exposed to consistent, repeated bad air days likely increases the chances of poor health outcomes, according to Kevin Stewart, American Lung’s director of environmental health, who lives in Lancaster County.

“Even one bad-air day is too much,” Stewart said during an interview last week.

Slow progress

Bad-air days in Lancaster County have been numerous for years, according to Katie Edwards, a spokesperson from Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit focused on pollution reduction.

She cited prior years’ State of the Air reports to back her claim before explaining that there are multiple reasons why the air quality is “so poor.” In addition to some of the sources mentioned by other experts, Edwards expressly highlighted the county’s prevalence of wood-burning stoves and its many busy highways. She also noted that much of the county is flat and sparsely forested, so there are fewer trees to capture pollutants.

However, not all sources are local, Edwards said, noting Lancaster County’s location downwind of other polluters, specifically a power plant and manufacturing facilities in neighboring York County. Previously, other experts have drawn attention to Lancaster County’s proximity to larger metropolitan areas, including Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, as well as the fact that the county lies downwind of the Ohio River Valley, where there are numerous coal-fired power plants.

In addition to short-term particulate pollution, the report includes evaluations for ozone and long-term, year-round particle pollution.

Comparing the new report to 2021 results, American Lung officials said Lancaster County saw a slight improvement during the 2022 reporting period when it comes to days of high ozone — a harmful gas that forms when pollutants from automobiles, power plants and industrial activities react with sunlight.

For ozone, American Lung officials gave Lancaster County a C grade for the second year in a row. That grade comes from a weighted average of 1.7 unhealthy ozone days, annually, recorded in the 2022 report. As with particulates, anything above an average of 3.2 is considered failing, according to the association’s scale.

Similarly, long-term particulate pollution got slightly better, with the county recording its fourth straight year of receiving a passing grade from the association, which rates the pollution type on a pass/fail basis.

“It’s a slow steady march in the right direction,” Stewart said.

Experts, including Craig, Edwards and Peterson, said improvements will be most effective if enacted systematically by lawmakers and regulators who have the ability to impose and enforce stricter environmental protections.

Sharing the results of the State of the Air report with decision-makers can help, Craig said.

Also, there is a need to reduce reliance on individual, gas-powered vehicles, Edwards said, calling for local residents to advocate for increased and more-efficient public transportation and bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

“We need safer roads. We need safer sidewalks,” she said. “We need people to feel safe walking and biking to places.”

Protect yourself

There are steps people can take to protect themselves from bad air, Craig said. They should stay inside on days when the National Weather Service warns of bad air, they should never smoke cigarettes or other substances and they should avoid use of pollution-emitting gas stoves and wood-burning fireplaces indoors, he said.

“We think about air pollution always being outside, but there is a fair amount inside, as well,” Craig said.

And most of all, Peterson said it’s important to take this issue seriously, to make attempts toward environmental improvements that can, in turn, improve public health. That should be true, he said, regardless of political beliefs.

“People have to start to listen to what science is telling them,” he said. “A lot of people today, unfortunately, don't want to do that.”

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