Low humidity and temps teasing summer might have you scrambling to open a window, but you might want to check the air quality first. The Washington-Baltimore-Arlington metro area scored an F for daily air particle pollution in the American Lung Association’s 2025 “State of the Air” report, released on April 23.
That’s down from a C grade in the association’s 2024 report, though the reason for the decline may or may not be anomalous. The report studied air quality data between 2021-23, the most recent three years of quality-assured nationwide air pollution data publicly available. In June 2023, smoke from record-breaking Canadian wildfires blanketed our area. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) reported 20 unhealthy air days that month, the most since 2012.
MWCOG’s 2024 air quality report found that ozone and particulate pollution have actually been trending downward in the DMV since the early 2000s, although those data sets also included some outliers. The Covid pandemic lockdowns also helped improve air quality in this area.
While local air quality is currently better than it was during the conditions that led to the American Lung Association’s F rating, that could change as we enter wildfire season.
“We know that the air doesn’t stay stationary,” says Aleks Casper, the association’s director of advocacy for D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. “There have been times over the years where the wildfire smoke from the West has come [here]. We have felt it on the East, but I don’t think we have felt it as drastically as we did when we had the [Canadian] wildfires.”
The State of the Air report, which the association has compiled annually for 26 years, uses data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System. The index takes into account three pollution measures: short-term and year-round particle pollution (also known as soot), and ozone pollution (also known as smog) over a three-year period.
Arlington earned a C for short-term particle pollution in the latest report, while Fairfax got an F. Both counties scored Ds for ozone pollution.
Overall, the DMV ranked 53rd worst out of 225 metro areas nationwide for short-term particle pollution; 66th worst out of 208 places for year-round particle pollution; and 36th out of 228 in the country for ozone pollution. (Nationally, Bakersfield, California, ranks worst for particle pollution and Los Angeles ranks worst for ozone pollution.)
“Some of the things that impact the metro area…are things like highways,” Casper says. “Smog and particle pollution come from transportation sources. Particle pollution can come from construction, [demolitions], brake pads, tires, things of that nature. So that, I think, is also playing a role in [the D.C.] metro area.”
David Duhamel, a pulmonologist with Pulmonary & Medical Associates of Northern Virginia at VHC Health, says any amount of pollution can be detrimental to respiratory health.
“Your lungs are like your air filters in your home. Every time you breathe in, your body has the ability to protect itself a little bit,” he says, “but there is a certain degree of material that’s going to end up down into your lungs, into your alveoli, and it’s going to cause some issues related to your ability to breathe, the ability to put oxygen into your bloodstream. The lung is a really delicate little organ. Nobody really appreciates it until it doesn’t work all that well.”
Air pollution can increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, and can cause health problems such as asthma and heart attacks, strokes and preterm births. Poor air quality can also affect cognitive function later in life. People with underlying respiratory conditions such as asthma, COPD and emphysema are especially susceptible to health setbacks, as are children.
“Children are more of an issue because the volume of air that they move through their lungs tends to be greater in proportion to their body weight,” Duhamel explains. “Also children’s lungs are not fully developed…so they’re more prone to the detrimental effects of inhaled irritants.”
Everyone can benefit from monitoring air quality daily, he adds. To do that, sign up for alerts from AirNow.gov, which provides data by ZIP code, city or state, or from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
“Having the knowledge of when air quality worsens is extremely important. You may not always be able to tell that just by looking outside,” Duhamel cautions. “If you’re at risk for problems related to your breathing in poor quality air, certainly in those situations, you’re going to want to limit your outdoor exposure.”
Nationwide, 46% of the population—156.1 million people—live in a place with at least one failing grade, according to the Lung Association report. That’s up 25 million from 2024 and a bigger increase than any other “State of the Air” report in the past 10 years. Extreme heat, drought and wildfires are major contributing factors.
“I think that’s a bit of an opportunity, or wake-up call, for us to say, ‘We need to continue looking at ways to make progress, and we need to protect the progress that we’ve made,’” Casper says.
Only two American cities—Bangor, Maine, and San Juan-Bayamón, Puerto Rico—ranked on all three cleanest cities lists.
Communities can improve air quality by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, facilitating the transition to zero-emission vehicles, and encouraging people to trade traveling short distances by car for walking or biking.
Arlington County has set an ambitious plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 through the Arlington Initiative to Rethink Energy (AIRE). The City of Falls Church has a similar initiative called the Community Energy Action Plan (CEAP) advocating clean energy, car-free transit and other measures to minimize carbon impacts.
The American Lung Association is encouraging people to contact their government representatives to express support for the Environmental Protection Agency and its public health research. “Without the staff and programs, we don’t know what’s in the air that we’re breathing,” Casper says.