Clean air where you'd never expect
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You wouldn’t know it by looking into the hazy sky on a windy spring day, but the Duke City has some of the cleanest air in the country, the American Lung Association (ALA) said Thursday. And Santa Fe is even better, ranking No. 2 on the association’s State of the Air 2008 report.
The report looks at two pollutants that are especially hard on people with compromised respiratory systems — ozone and particulate matter. Ozone, which is typically worst in the summer, is an invisible gas formed by the reaction between sunlight and burning fuels, such as from cars, trucks and power plants. Ozone can burn or irritate the respiratory tract, according to the report, while inhaling microscopic particulates — ash, soot, diesel exhaust and the like — can cause cancer, heart attacks and premature births.
For the least particulate pollution year-round, Santa Fe was ranked behind Cheyenne, Wyo., while Albuquerque was tied with Fargo, N.D., at No. 17 nationwide.
A closer look at the rankings might give a skeptic pause, however. Bernalillo County, of which Albuquerque is the biggest city, gets an A for its low number of high ozone days, but Santa Fe County isn’t even graded. Meanwhile, San Juan County in the Four Corners area earns a B, even with its numerous coal-fired power plants — which are among the main causes of ozone formation.
For particulates, Bernalillo County gets a C, while Santa Fe and San Juan counties each get an A. While New Mexico may rank low for the amount of soot and ash in the air, dust also is a particulate that affects air quality, but the lung association report doesn’t mention what role dust plays in the cities’ air quality.
The authors of the ALA report may have been in a hurry to get it to the printers. They also note that Sandoval County is now up to 402,000 people, and that Bernalillo County has declined to 267,000. In fact, Sandoval County had only 108,000 residents in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while Bernalillo County remains the state’s most populous, with about 615,000 people.
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