Good news, and challenging news, about the State of the Air: 2008

First, we would like to thank you for visiting the site. State of the Air has had great coverage around the nation. We’ve had a wonderful opportunity to talk about the critical impact air quality has on lung health and to let people know when and how they can protect themselves. This would not have been possible without the hard work of field staff and volunteers all across the nation.  Even more directly, this required the hard, dedicated work of a team of our national headquarters colleagues in New York City and here in DC. 

Today is one of the examples of why it takes many people and pieces to make this complex report and website happen. We discovered yesterday after launching that there were problems with the Groups at Risk database for each state. Many counties had population data appearing on the report card that actually belonged to other counties. In addition, we learned that some of the data tables for particle pollution had been placed in the wrong columns.  Several of you contacted us by email and phone to let us know that about the problems.  We thank you. Our team worked all night to get the database glitches fixed.  So here’s where we are now:

• The data on groups at risk and the particle pollution pages in the website have been corrected. We are double checking them now to be sure they are free of any glitches.
• Meanwhile, the tables in the state PDFs are correct. You can download a state PDF to use the printed versions for easy reference by clicking to the state pages here.

Don’t forget to visit the other sections of the site to learn more about how air pollution directly affects you and your family.  Be sure to share your stories with us on our Share Your Story section of the State of the Air website.

I’ll answer more of your questions about our report in the next few days.

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