Miles E. Keogh, National Association of Clean Air Agencies
State and local air pollution agencies work around the clock to improve air quality everywhere. And by working with our EPA partners, we’ve seen terrific success! READ MORE
“State of the Air” 2025 illustrates the profound impact that climate change is having on air quality and the continued urgency of reducing the sources of emissions that contribute to ozone and particle pollution.
Under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has driven decades of progress in cleaning up the transportation, electricity, buildings and industrial sectors. At the same time, EPA has tracked, analyzed and expanded the nation’s understanding of air pollution at the community level. Now, however, all of that progress is at risk.
Sweeping staff cuts and reduction of federal funding are stymieing the agency’s ability to ensure that people have clean air to breathe. This year’s “State of the Air” focuses on an overarching clarion call to people nationwide: support and defend EPA.
Contact your members of Congress today and urge them to save EPA’s expert staff and lifesaving programs.
EPA is, first and foremost, a public health agency. The agency works at every level to address air pollution. People breathe easier every day because of the work of EPA’s staff, but they may not realize just how much these workers matter.
EPA staff are the reason the nation has access to air quality data in the first place, including through “State of the Air.” A team of environmental scientists, modelers and statisticians and other experts enable the Airnow.gov site to work, which allows people across the country to get air quality forecasts online. They work with state and local governments to share those forecasts with communities across the country. They review the health science and write and update guidance on what people should do to protect themselves when the air quality index hits yellow, orange, red, purple and maroon. They share resources with schools that help them keep students safe when air pollution reaches unhealthy levels.
EPA staff are vital to ensuring that unhealthy levels of air pollution are not just monitored but also cleaned up. This is done in part by writing strong, sound safeguards under the Clean Air Act. For example, EPA is required to regularly update the National Ambient Air Quality Standards – the national limits on ozone and particle pollution on which this report is based. The scientific staff keep abreast of what the scientific research shows about air pollution, come up with different policy options, lead the work of analyzing the benefits to health of each option, and gather public input. For other types of standards, like limits on specific pollutants from power plants and vehicles, EPA staff do complex technical analyses of what technologies are available to reduce pollution, how and where they’re being used, and what the impacts would be to health and to industry of pursuing different options.
Another part of ensuring pollution cleanup is making sure these strong safeguards are enforced. EPA staff do that too. They work with state and local governments to make sure new facilities are reviewed before they get built so that they don’t add to the burden of unhealthy air in a place that’s already too polluted. They test cars and trucks in labs to make sure they’re not emitting more pollutants than they’re supposed to. They inspect facilities to ensure their compliance with air quality standards to protect communities in the area. They bring cases against companies that violate the laws that protect public health.
EPA also gives grants and other funding to state and local governments, community organizations, businesses and more to help them monitor and reduce air pollution. Many of these grants are from programs to reduce emissions and invest in clean transportation and clean electricity under the Inflation Reduction Act. Many more are under longstanding programs that fund the everyday efforts that state and local governments make to ensure clean air. Without these funds, state and local governments would have a hard time running local air quality monitors, tracking where pollution is coming from and writing and implementing plans to reduce that pollution. For all of these funds, EPA staff work hand-in-hand with these partners to make sure the funding goes where it needs to go and supports the work that needs to be done.
EPA’s key principles are to follow the science, follow the law, and be transparent. Those principles have guided decades of progress toward cleaner air. But efforts to undercut them put the agency’s core mission at risk.
The bottom line is this: EPA staff, working in communities across country, are doing crucial work to keep your air clean. Staff cuts are already impacting people’s health across the country. Further cuts mean more dirty air.
State and local air pollution agencies work around the clock to improve air quality everywhere. And by working with our EPA partners, we’ve seen terrific success! READ MORE
The most important thing I learned during my 30+ year career is that the civil servants in the EPA air office care deeply about providing clean air for everyone and doing it in the most efficient and effective way possible. READ MORE
During my time at the EPA, the Office of Research and Development’s work informed regulatory decisions involving air, water, land and chemicals. It informed enforcement actions, as well as cleanup and emergency response efforts in EPA’s regions. READ MORE
EPA's Office of Research and Development asked me to develop a new NAAQS PM2.5 standard method – that is, to come up with a better way to measure fine particles to ensure a better health outcome for the American people. READ MORE
In “State of the Air” 2024, we celebrated the fact that several lifesaving new air pollution safeguards were finalized by EPA, thanks to the hard work of agency staff and the health and environmental advocates who supported them. Now, that progress is at risk.
Executive orders issued in January 2025 and EPA announcements in March seek to overturn regulatory policies that reduce pollution from electricity generation and transportation. But a regulation cannot be overturned simply by an executive order or a press statement. That means that the clean air safeguards are still on the books, still the law of the land, and still need to be defended and protected, especially as new actions are announced to reconsider these lifesaving programs. They include:
These rules are on the books. They were adopted by following the law, and EPA must uphold the rule of law now. The rules must stay in place and be implemented and enforced. Anything less means people will suffer health harms from dirty air that could have been prevented.
States and cities still have many tools in their toolbox to reduce emissions that harm people’s health, like cleaning up vehicles by adopting the Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Trucks policies, investing in charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and requiring more electricity to come from truly clean sources like wind, solar, geothermal and tidal. They can also adopt policies to reduce emissions from buildings, manufacturing facilities and freight activities.
Cities, communities and individuals can also adopt a suite of “smart surfaces” solutions – things like cool roofs, porous pavement, more green space and solar panels that help reduce heat in their neighborhoods and protect health from the combined health harms of pollution and dangerously high temperatures.
Individuals can keep themselves safe and help their friends and families do the same – things like checking daily air pollution forecasts at airnow.gov, preparing for wildfires, floods and other disasters at lung.org/disaster, and reducing emissions from their vehicle or home energy use in their own lives.
Above all: you can also use the power of your personal voice. Even in a time when clean air protections are under threat, the fact remains: people nationwide want clean air. The need for clean air is universal, nonpartisan and knows no boundaries. And sharing a story is powerful – whether it’s a time when you had asthma symptoms on a smoggy day, your child spent days indoors because of wildfire smoke, or the concerns you have about how losses of staff and funding at EPA may impact the air you breathe. That’s true when you take your story to your elected officials, but it’s also true with family, friends, and other members of your community.
"During a review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for particulate matter, EPA's Office of Research and Development asked me to develop a new NAAQS PM2.5 standard method – that is, to come up with a better way to measure fine particles to ensure a better health outcome for the American people. I led a research group at EPA that developed the new method and wrote the material in the code of federal regulations explaining how to make and report these measurements. The PM2.5 method is still the method used by the U.S. today as well as the rest of the world.
One of the most important aspects of the new method was to ensure it was both accurate and precise in its measurements. The PM2.5 methodology included a rigorous quality assurance program to make certain that the reported measurements were legitimate. It allowed any manufacturer who met the requirements to get approval from EPA to construct and sell their instruments. EPA’s Office of Research and Development played a key role in ensuring the legitimacy of the method and controlling its cost."
State and local clean air agencies deliver air quality improvements by working together with communities, companies, elected leaders, and civic organizations to carry out the programs that cut emissions and improve public health and prosperity. Whether it’s developing and implementing state plans, deploying air pollution monitors, helping small businesses comply with the law, or enforcing regulations that protect the public, state and local air pollution agencies work around the clock to improve air quality everywhere. And by working with our EPA partners, we’ve seen terrific success! While more work remains to be done to protect clean air for all, since Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, air pollution has dropped sharply while the economy has grown.
Science is essential as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency carries out its mission to protect human health and the environment. In fact, laws passed by Congress require the EPA to use the “best available science” in many decisions about regulations, permits, cleaning up contaminated sites and responding to emergencies.
In addition to being an academic researcher who works on air pollution, from 2022 to 2024, I served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and the EPA science adviser. The Office of Research and Development is the agency’s scientific research arm and the EPA’s primary source for gathering and developing the best available science for decision-makers.
During my time at the EPA, the Office of Research and Development’s work informed regulatory decisions involving air, water, land and chemicals. It informed enforcement actions, as well as cleanup and emergency response efforts in EPA’s regions. State agencies and tribal nations also look to the EPA for expertise on the best available science, since they typically do not have resources to develop this science themselves.
EPA’s role in implementing the Clean Air Act
When I first joined EPA in 1991, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments had just been finalized, and we were taking on the task of implementing those amendments. Since that time, many people have stated that the Clean Air Act and especially the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments have been some of the most successful pieces of legislation ever written. It is hard to argue that point when you look at air pollution levels from the 1970s compared to today and contrast that to the growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the same period. But as a new EPA employee, one of the things that I did not appreciate until I worked at EPA for a while was that all of that success does not come just from EPA writing rules and publishing them in the Federal Register. That is only the very beginning of the process. It is the implementation of those rules that actually gets the air quality benefits, and that implementation process is one that includes a multitude of participants, all of whom engage with EPA staff on a regular basis to make it work.
State, local and tribal air agencies are on the front lines for implementing most of the clean air rules and the regulated entities carry much of the burden for reducing the emissions under those rules. But what really makes all this work so well is the engagement of all the players working together to get the emissions reductions that yield cleaner air in a way that is both beneficial to the environment while also minimizing the impact on the regulated entity. Most of my career was spent interacting with state, local, tribal air agency partners to listen to their concerns, work together to find solutions to challenging problems and to use their input to make rules as implementable as possible. In the same way, I spent an equal amount of time engaging with stakeholders in the regulated community as they were most knowledgeable about their facilities and often had excellent suggestions on how best to implement various regulations in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. They also had ideas how we could improve many of the implementation tools they needed and used.
I realized that throughout my career that not only do EPA staff care deeply about the mission of the Agency and protecting public health and the environment, but they also have a deep respect for those they work with in both government and the private sector. They appreciate that the role of a civil servant is to serve… to serve the people of this country and that includes all the people. Those that work for state, local and tribal air agencies, those in the regulated community, as well as all of the people that live and breathe air in this country.
When rules are written, they are not done haphazardly, but with great care to consider all input provided during public comment periods. They are developed to be as cost-effective as possible, to consider the impacts on the regulated community while also fulfilling the mission of the Agency to protect public health and the environment. EPA civil servants bring their technical and policy knowledge to every issue to make sure that everyone is heard, and all aspects of the solution are studied to make sure the best possible outcome is achieved. The expertise of these scientists and engineers and the many years of experience is critical to making the best decisions possible and with that expertise, unnecessary consequences of an action can be avoided.
When people in this country take a deep breath, they want to have confidence that the air they inhale is clean and not harmful to them. They expect that and they deserve that as citizens of the United States. The most important thing I learned during my 30+ year career is that the civil servants in the EPA air office care deeply about providing clean air for everyone and doing it in the most efficient and effective way possible. Across government, that is what civil servants do… they serve. They serve the American people every day.
Page last updated: April 18, 2025
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