Air quality worsened in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette and Lake Charles over a recent three-year period affected by global external factors like Saharan dust storms, Canadian wildfires and rising temperatures, the American Lung Association says in a new annual report.
No metro areas in Louisiana ranked in the top 25 nationally for the worst for air quality, but the Baton Rouge metro area was the worst in the Southeast for ozone pollution, the nonprofit advocacy group says.
The report on the nation’s air from the Lung Association, which advocates for lung health and clean air, looked at government measurements of ground-level ozone, or smog, and two kinds of fine particulate measures from monitors located in about a third of the state’s parishes…