Bad news is we're dirty, but the upside is we're getting better about it.
A new report from the American Lung Association listing the nation's most polluted cities ranked Cleveland 11th out of 171 metropolitan areas. The State of the Air report also gave Cuyahoga County an "F" for ozone days and annual particle pollution and a "D" for particle pollution over 24 hours.
The ozone rating, generally speaking, means the air is unhealthy for sensitive populations (or an "orange" rating). The best is green, while the worst, "very unhealthy" is purple.
Even though the outlook is rather bleak, our metro area's ranking is the best ever recorded since this sort of recording began. So, we got that going for us.
In case you were wondering where to find the city with the least ozone pollution, it's all the way in Bellingham, Washington (yeah, we have no idea where that is either), and the most polluted city is Los Angeles, which is little to no surprise.
