Roughly one in five Americans lives in counties that have high, unhealthy daily levels of pollution from manufacturing soot, vehicle exhaust and other fine particles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.

The findings, part of the lung association’s annual “State of the Air” report, also indicated that more people are residing in such high-pollution areas nationwide than at any other time in the past decade. The report, which the lung association calls a “national report card on air quality,” is based on data compiled from electronic air quality monitors across the country.

The report also found that people of color disproportionately reside in communities with harmful air. About 64 million people of color live in areas that have received at least one failing grade from environmentalists for ozone or fine particle pollution, the report found.

The lung association’s review also found that more people are being exposed to high levels of fine particle pollution for longer periods, especially in the Western United States. Among the 25 American cities that have the unhealthiest air, the average number of days that residents were exposed to high levels of particle pollution increased to about 18 days from about 16 days since last year’s report. All but two of the 25 worst cities for daily particle pollution were located in the Western U.S.

Taken together, experts said, the findings in the report underscore just how far the nation has to go in remediating the effects of the worst kinds of airborne pollution. Despite years of increased environmental regulations around air quality, environmentalists, researchers and others agreed that much more needs to be done.

Read the full article about the disproportionate impacts of air pollution by Victoria St. Martin at Inside Climate News.