{"id":360786,"date":"2026-07-04T06:32:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T06:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360786\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T06:32:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T06:32:34","slug":"despite-houstons-progress-toward-cleaner-air-pollution-still-a-concern-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360786\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Houston\u2019s progress toward cleaner air, pollution still a concern | Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Houston\u2019s pollutant and ozone levels have improved over the last 25 years, the region\u2019s air quality is still not meeting the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s standards, experts say.
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\nAccording to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, from 2000 to 2016, the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria population increased by 44 percent, while ground-level ozone levels improved by 29 percent.
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\nStuart Mueller, operations manager for Harris County Pollution Control Services, said TCEQ released rules in the early 2000s regarding nitrogen oxides and organic compounds\u2014which can be precursors to ozone formation\u2014that contributed to the decline in ozone.
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\nThe American Lung Association\u2019s 2018 State of the Air Report\u2014which was released April 18 and studied Houston air between 2014 and 2016\u2014found that Houston reported its fewest unhealthy ozone days ever since the study has been conducted.
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\nDespite this progress, Houston is still not meeting EPA standards.
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\n\u201cWe are getting this uptick in pollution\u2014not anywhere near the levels that we saw 10, 15 years ago\u2014but it isn\u2019t on that same steady decline that we had been seeing,\u201d said Stephanie Thomas, a Houston-based organizer and researcher for Public Citizen, a nonprofit political advocacy organization.
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\nHouston-Galveston Area Council experts anticipate, under the EPA\u2019s 2008 standards and based on previous years\u2019 emissions, the EPA will reclassify Houston as \u201cserious\u201d this summer, meaning the region\u2019s air quality has not improved enough to meet EPA standards.
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\n\u201cWe have a ways to go [to improve air quality in Houston],\u201d H-GAC Air Quality Manager Shelley Whitworth said.
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\nContributing factors
\nThe Clean Air Act, a federal law passed in 1970 to control air quality, makes it a requirement for the EPA to issue standards known as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for six criteria pollutants, according to the EPA\u2019s website.
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\nExperts have said two of the most critical to Houston are particulate matter and ground-level ozone. Different from stratospheric ozone\u2014which is found naturally in the atmosphere\u2014ground-level ozone is created from natural and man-made chemical compounds and pollutants, according to the TCEQ.
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\nTCEQ Media Relations Specialist Andrew Keese said the TCEQ uses its network of ozone monitors\u00a0across the Greater Houston area\u2014including one off Telge Road south of the Grand Parkway\u2014to track emissions.
\nAnother factor is increased traffic on roadways, said Alan Clark, director of transportation planning for H-GAC.
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\n\u201cWhen we adopt a new plan, when we fund new projects\u2014particularly those that are of significant regional impact\u2014we have to perform an explicit air quality analysis, using the TCEQ\u2019s process for measuring emission impacts to show, to demonstrate, that we will continue to be on track to meet the emissions reductions required in that [plan],\u201d he said.
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\nEffects and solutions
\nDespite progress toward cleaner air, Houston has never reached attainment\u2014the acceptable standard\u2014for ground-level ozone, according to the TCEQ.
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\nThe EPA measures ozone in terms of parts per billion and changed acceptable standards from 75 ppb to 70 ppb in 2015. Data collected from 2013 to 2015 measures ozone levels in Harris County at 79 ppb, according to a 2016 TCEQ report submitted to the EPA.
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\n\u201cHaving higher than the standard levels of ozone can actually be harmful to our health,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cOzone creates a number of respiratory issues, and children are especially vulnerable as well as the elderly and people who have pre-existing conditions.\u201d
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\nAlthough Houston\u2019s ozone levels have dropped from highs of 230-250 ppb in the late \u201990s, there is still work to be done to identify problem areas, officials said.
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\nConsidering the progress the city has made, Whitworth said Houston\u2019s inability to meet the standard for ozone proves other solutions need to be looked at.
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\nThomas said TCEQ has a number of programs that could help reduce vehicle emissions, including the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan. The program helps companies and government agencies apply for funding for cleaner vehicles.
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\n\u201cIf you are driving a truck that is 20 years old, you are going to be contributing significantly more air pollution than a truck that is a year old,\u201d she said.
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\nLatrice Babin, deputy director of Harris County Pollution Control Services, said she agrees mass transit can help.
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\n\u201cWhen you drive your vehicle, when you idle your vehicle\u2014all of those things contribute to the soup that is ozone and the air quality of our area,\u201d she said.
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\nThe department receives about 1,500 pollution complaints annually that it investigates, about half of which involve air quality, Babin said.
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\n\u201cAir permits are in place for industrial facilities, but each person has to do their little bit,\u201d she said.
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\nAdditional reporting by Shawn Arrajj<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Houston\u2019s pollutant and ozone levels have improved over the last 25 years, the region\u2019s air quality is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[128113,56,58,57,128114],"class_list":["post-360786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-despite-houstons-progress-toward-cleaner-air","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-pollution-still-a-concern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}