Wildfires are making the country smoggy again, reversing progress on cleaner air: Study

Wildfires Are Reversing Years of US Air Quality Gains, Study Finds

Tailpipe emissions standards implemented early this century helped reduce smog levels. Longer, more intense fire seasons have erased much of that progress.By Avril SilvaWildfires have worsened ozone levels across the United States so much over the last decade that they have reversed around four years of progress, a new study has found.

Wildfires are making the country smoggy again, reversing progress on cleaner air: Study

For more than a decade, the United States dramatically reduced its national smog levels, but since 2015 smoke from increasingly larger wildfires is reversing that clean-up trend and making the air dirtier and deadlier.

Increase in wildfire-driven ozone pollution linked to premature deaths across the U.S.

Smog from wildfires is getting worse across much of the U.S., according to a NASA-funded study

Wildfires Are Reversing America’s Progress On Ozone Pollution, The Main Ingredient In Smog - UMBC: University Of Maryland, Baltimore County

Written by Weizhi Deng, University of Iowa; Jun Wang, University of Iowa; and Meng Zhou, research scientist at the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Research Center II For decades, the United States made steady progress in reducing surface ozone pollution, the main ingredient in smog. But that progress – achieved as vehicles, industries and power sources became cleaner – is increasingly being overshadowed by a different and growing source of…

Decade of Wildfires Erases Four Years of US Air Quality Progress, New Study Reveals

A troubling new study reveals that wildfires have dramatically reversed years of hard-won progress in cleaning up America’s air. Over the past decade, increasingly severe wildfire seasons have pushed ozone pollution levels so high that they’ve effectively erased approximately four years of air quality improvements across the United States. The research shows that surface ozone levels—commonly known as smog—have steadily climbed from 2015 to 2024…

Ozone pollution is worsening in the lower 48 over the last decade, and it’s due to wildfires

Researchers from the University of Iowa have published a new study in Science on how ozone pollution is worsening over the continental United States due to wildfires and the long-distance transport of unhealthy air. Wildfires are worsening ozone pollution across the United States. A new study published in Science, “Fires reverse progress toward ozone quality standards in the U.S.” led by researchers from the University of Iowa shows that surface…