2026 State of the Air report<\/a> found the Philadelphia metro area, comprised of parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, failed all three measures tracked by researchers: ozone smog, daily particle pollution and year-round particle pollution.<\/p>\nPhiladelphia’s ranking for year-round fine particle pollution jumped from the 26th worst in 2025 to the 17th worst this year. <\/p>\n
Pediatric lung specialist Dr. Christy Sadreameli of Johns Hopkins, who works with ALA, said the health consequences of poor air quality begin before a child has even been born.<\/p>\n
\u201cMothers who are pregnant, who are exposed to high levels of particular matter, their kids have a lower lung function,\u201d she said. \u201cAlso, exposure in early childhood and in infancy to air pollution is associated with lower function in later childhood, in adolescence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sadreameli added that wildfires have made the problem more visible in recent years, sending patients to her clinic, struggling to breathe. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had several days of very, very poor air quality, and it was so poor, you could even see the air was hazy,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
The doctor cited pollution exposure as especially harmful to children and advised parents to pay attention to the air quality index.<\/p>\n
\u201cExposure to outdoor air pollution is responsible for both new cases of asthma, which can be lifelong, and exacerbations of asthma,\u201d she warned.<\/p>\n
ALA Director of Environmental Health Kevin Stewart also urged parents to keep track of the air quality. <\/p>\n
\u201cMake it help moderate their family\u2019s behavior,\u201d he said, \u201cso they\u2019re not out there exercising at the worst time of day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 More than 1 million children in Pennsylvania are breathing unhealthy air, according to this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30257,16934,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-172800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-air-quality","9":"tag-american-lung-association","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","12":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}