Air Quality Awareness Days - Summer Safety

Includes Protecting Your Lungs

Martinsburg, WV - Keep your lungs safe this summer! Use Air Quality Index forecasts to help protect yourself from ozone pollution.

Ozone pollution, also known as ground-level ozone, forms when pollutants from sources such as cars, lawn mowers, and industrial plants "cook" in the sun. This common pollutant can affect everyone, but some groups of people are more vulnerable to ozone's effects. They include children who are active outdoors; people with lung diseases, including asthma; and healthy adults of all ages who exercise or work vigorously outside.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) work with state and local agencies across the country to issue daily ozone forecasts. The forecasts are based on EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI), which provides recommendations for reducing your exposure when ozone levels are high.

How can you protect yourself? Reduce the time you are active outdoors or reduce your activity levels. Walk instead of jogging, for example. Or simply plan outdoor activities when ozone levels are lower, usually in the early morning or evening.

Activity levels play a key role in ozone exposure. When people are active outdoors, they breathe harder and deeper, pulling more air into their lungs. On high ozone days, people breathe in ozone along with air, and that can injure their lungs.

Ozone pollution causes cells in the lungs to turn red and inflamed, similar to what happens to your skin cells when it gets sunburned. And like sunburned skin cells, airway cells damaged by ozone die and slough off. Over time, exposure to ozone pollution can reduce the lungs’ ability to function. Ozone also can aggravate asthma and other lung diseases such as emphysema and bronchitis. And recent research suggests that acute ozone exposure may contribute to premature death.

How can you tell if ozone is affecting you? You may experience symptoms like coughing, a burning sensation when you breathe, chest tightness, or shortness of breath. If you have asthma, you may find yourself needing to use medicine more frequently, or you may have asthma attacks that require a doctor's attention.

Use AQI forecasts to help reduce your ozone exposure. Air quality forecasts for the Eastern Panhandle are available at www.cleanairconnection.org. For more information about Air Quality Awareness Days, designated June 29 – July 1, 2005, visit www.airnow.gov.

Eastern Panhandle Clean Air Connection is a public-private community partnership sponsored by the local governments of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties and the City of Martinsburg, and managed by the Region 9 Planning and Development Council. Their mission is to increase public awareness of air pollution through education and outreach, as well as encourage community participation in voluntary actions that will improve air quality in the Eastern Panhandle Region.

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