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Air quality alert: How to help your pets
Dr. Eric Ruhland from the St. Paul Pet Hospital shares useful advice on how pet owners can navigate future air quality alerts that might pop up throughout the summer.
(FOX 9) - A new report from the American Lung Association says air pollution remains a serious health threat for children and families in the Twin Cities.
Twin Cities ‘F’ grade for air quality
What we know:
The 27th annual "State of the Air" report from the American Lung Association gave the Twin Cities an ‘F’ grade for short-term particle pollution, ranking the area 39th worst in the U.S.
The report uses data collected at monitoring sites by government agencies to assess air quality over a three-year period, most recently including 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Dig deeper:
Both ozone (smog) and particle pollution (soot) are linked to serious health problems, including asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes and even lung cancer.
Infants, children and teens are especially vulnerable to air pollution because their lungs are still developing, and they breathe more air for their body size than adults.
By the numbers:
According to the report, roughly 723,418 children under age 18 in Minnesota are breathing unhealthy levels of air pollution, and nearly half of all children in the U.S. face similar risks.
The report found that 44% of people in the U.S. — about 152 million — live in an area with at least one failing grade for air pollution.
This year’s edition also highlights that 33.5 million children nationwide live in areas with at least one failing grade for air quality.
What they're saying:
"Clean air is essential to the health and wellbeing of families across Minnesota. Children deserve to breathe air that won’t make them sick. Unfortunately, too many people in the Twin Cities metro area are living with unhealthy levels of particle pollution. This air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, contributing to chronic health conditions, and making people who work outdoors sick," said Jon Hunter, senior director of Healthy Air Solutions for the American Lung Association, in a statement accompanying the report. "To compound the issue further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rollbacks of critical healthy air rules are impacting our residents."
The backstory:
The "State of the Air" report has been published annually since 2000, grading ozone and particle pollution using government-collected data.
According to the 2025 report, Minnesota's Anoka (ozone) and Dakota (particle) counties had the worst grades in Minnesota.
On the flip side, Carlton County is ranked the fifth-cleanest in the U.S. for year-round particle pollution. Carlton and Lake counties also led the statewide rankings for best ozone conditions.
The Source: Information provided by the American Lung Association’s "State of the Air" report.