[kramhorse]

I don't know where people are getting their information from. This conclusion wasn't based on "one monitor by a coke plant in Clairton" it was based on every air monitor in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System. [see: http://lungaction.org/reports/sota07_methodology.html] In Allegheny County (where Pittsburgh is located) that system includes 8 separate monitor sites [see: http://www.achd.net/air/pubs/pdf/4q07aqreport.pdf] (yes, one of them is at Clairton, based on EPA regulatory requirements for the placement of air monitors). The county air report I linked above also shows that in 2007 every one of these 8 monitor sites recorded days where particulate matter levels exceeded EPA's maximum health-based standards. Every monitor site in Allegheny County has recorded a problem!

If you still want to say that Clairton is skewing the results, consider this:
"Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of Pennsylvania, said he understands Pittsburgh's frustration with the No. 1 ranking, but even if the Liberty-Clairton area is removed from the calculations, the metropolitan area would still rank 16th worst out of 222 metropolitan areas covered in the report."[see: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08122/878162-85.stm]
And what if every metropolitan area was given the luxury of removing their worst performing monitor? Then we'd be right back at the top of the list.

Several commenters in this forum have suggested there's some sort of shadowy conspiracy to portray Pittsburgh's air quality as worse than it is. Ignoring how difficult it would be to manipulate official EPA data from official monitoring sites, why would anyone want to do that? What would they have to gain? And even if environmentalists were that scheming, what makes Pittsburgh environmentalists so special that they can skew air quality results while environmentalists in other metropolitan areas can't?

I'd ask you all to look at the facts and make up your own minds rather than relying on a few grossly misinformed individuals efforts to discredit the study. The entire study, including a description of data sources and methodology is available here: http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html]American Lung Association:*State of the Air: 2007