Air Quality

The air we breathe is an essential life need that connects us all. In Northwest Indiana, our air is cleaner than ever before, but we can not take it for granted. Some residents will remember the region prior to the advent of environmental regulation when air you could see, smell, and taste was a symbol of our economic success. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990, millions of dollars in engineering and pollution control technology spent on region industries, power plants, gas stations, and cars has had dramatic results.  Yet for all the progress we have made in air quality, there is still work to be done. The work and effort that got us here must be maintained and science continually finds new challenges that must be met.

EPA’s Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act.

What is Air Pollution?

Different people and organizations talk about air pollution in different ways. Ambient air pollution is the presence of substances in the air in amounts that are detrimental to human health and the environment.  Sometimes these substances are completely man made.  Other times, they may be naturally occurring but the activities and choices of people increase the amount of them in the air, or our exposure to them. These typically fall into several categories that are regulated differently due to different sources as well as the different kinds of health effects and environmental impacts they might cause.

Criteria Air Pollutants were and still are the six most commonly found air pollutants contributing to health and environmental problems in the US. These six are particulate matter(PM), ground-level ozone(O3) , carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrous oxides (NOx) and lead. Because of their widespread impact across the country, USEPA establishes health based standards for how much of each one can be in the air in any location and designates areas with too much as Non-Attainment, requiring states to develop State Implementation Plans to achieve “Attainment” with the standards.

Greenhouse Gases are substances that have been demonstrated to have a physically insulating effect in the atmosphere, reducing heat energy loss to space, similar to the way that glass or plastic walls allow light to enter, but prevent heat from escaping a greenhouse.  We know from our own experience that different fabrics and building materials have different insulating capabilities.  Many substances in  both human and man-made have varying insulating properties including carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons.  Human economic activity has dramatically changed the relative abundance of some of these in the atmosphere over time contributing to what science agrees is an increasingly dramatic change in our planet’s climate. They have not historically been regulated and recent attempts to do so at the federal level continue to meet political and legal challenges.