Air Quality: It’s All About Health

Since 1967, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has worked to ensure that people in King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties have clean air to breathe. Clean air is healthy air – and healthy air is critical to our health and well-being, and that of our families.

In the Puget Sound region, fine particle pollution, air toxics and ozone are our greatest air quality concerns. These pollutants pose a range of health impacts – such as respiratory ailments, heart disease and cancer – which is why we support and implement programs and policies designed to reduce their emissions, and our risk of exposure to them.

For more on the linkages between air quality and health, check out these resources:

• Air Quality Index: A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health (U.S. EPA)

• Poster: Health Effects of Common Air Pollutants (U.S. EPA) (PDF 4.8MB)

• Flyer: Asthma and Outdoor Air Pollution (U.S. EPA) (PDF 0.5MB)

• Health Effects of Wood Smoke (Washington State Department of Ecology) (PDF 0.2MB)

• Fact sheet: Health Effects of Diesel Exhaust (California Environmental Protection Agency) (PDF 0.1MB)

• Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States (New England Journal of Medicine, January 22, 2009)

• American Lung Association of Washington

• Northwest Center for Particulate Matter & Health