Tackling Urban Air Problems

More and more people are coming to know what native southerners have known for years: few places compare to the South's high quality of life, making it an ideal place to live, work and raise a family. Economic opportunity combined with the low cost of living have contributed to explosive growth across the region.

While the benefits of this growth are enormous, so are its costs. Thousands of more cars on our roadways and an increase in the length of our daily commutes have had severe impacts on our region's air quality. Virtually every major metro area in the Southeast has air that fails to meet federal health standards, impacting 20 million people. Increasingly, our neighbors are finding themselves unable to enjoy the outdoors and our children are staying inside because the air is unhealthy to breathe. Cases of asthma, as well as lung and heart disease are on the rise across the South. In the meantime, we are risking the very quality of life that fuels our economic growth.

SELC is tackling urban air problems across the South. Building on groundbreaking work in Atlanta to enforce federal laws to reduce air pollution in the entire metro area, SELC has turned its attention to developing effective long-range plans for clean air across North and South Carolina. In addition, SELC has pushed EPA, as well as state and local governments, to ensure that cities across the South with unhealthy levels of ozone and particle pollution are properly identified and that comprehensive plans to achieve healthy air as soon as possible are developed and implemented.

• Ozone Pollution
• Soot Pollution
• Clean Air in Atlanta
• Clean Air for the Carolinas