No problem, we’ll just get rid of the EPA and those pesky numbers will go away
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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The Sheep Look Up is looking more prophetic by the day.
Love to open my window every morning to the sounds of the birds chirping, the sun shining, and take a deep breath of that springtime air mixed with aersolized tire particulates and fresh wildfire smoke 
For anyone wondering what a failing grade actually means, grades are assigned on a weigted average of the following:
Unless I've got something horribly wrong it seems like the American Lung Association is saying 50%+ Americans live in an area with an AQI above 225. If that's true it's kind of out of whack with the online sites that usually say anywhere between 30 to 70.
https://www.lung.org/research/sota/about-the-report/methodology
Perhaps someone else can read it and correct me, it's possible I've misunderstood something as it's like 6am and I haven't slept yet.
No, I think that this rating just has an extremely high bar for what it considers failing. If I read this right you could fail by having 10 orange days over 3 years.
To support this they state,
For short-term particle pollution, fewer unhealthy air days are required for an F than for nonattainment under the PM2.5 standard. The 2006 24-hour PM2.5 standard is set to allow two percent of the days during the three years to exceed 35 µg/m3 (called a “98th percentile” form) before violating the standard. That would be roughly 21 unhealthy days in three years. The grading used in this report would allow only about one percent of the days to be over 35 µg/m3 (called a “99th percentile” form) of the PM2.5. The American Lung Association supports using the tighter limits in a 99th percentile form as a more appropriate standard that is intended to protect the public from short-term episodes or spikes in pollution.
So 21 orange days in 3 years represents 98th percentile and they are looking at 99th, so 10 days sounds about right.
I think 35 ug/m^3 is AQI 100...
Ooooo that does make more sense!
I suppose the bar is set for like, aiming for people to be living in good conditions 100% of the time. If they're not in good conditions basically at any time then they're failing them.
10 days is low enough that the wildfires could be the main cause of the data change?
Could be, the article says it's due to heat, drought, and wildfires
Like Americans care