Code Red: America's Five Most Polluted National Parks. Executive Summary

摘要

America's national parks are endangered by polluted air. In fact, many of these parks suffer some of the nation's dirtiest air, rivaling or even exceeding that of our most polluted cities, such as Atlanta and Los Angeles. This level of pollution occurs even though Congress in 1977 amended the Clean Air Act to ensure that certain national parks and wildlands, called Class I areas, would have the cleanest air in America. Although surveys show that Americans expect clean air in the parks, the important promise of the Clean Air Act remains largely unfulfilled. This report examines the current state of air quality in our national parks. This document uses an air pollution index, originally developed by Appalachian Voices for two earlier editions of this report, to rank the five most-polluted national parks based on three impacts--haze, ozone, and acid precipitation. Numerous public lands in the United States, such as wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, also suffer from similar air-quality problems. Although these lands are not the focus of this report, the status of the five most-polluted parks is indicative of problems in these other areas and in our own communities as well.