Most people living in Arizona already know the air isn’t always clean. When a brown haze settles over the Valley on a hot summer morning, it can make a run outside feel like a bad idea. What the American Lung Association’s 2026 State of the Air report makes clear is that the air isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a public health crisis affecting the majority of people in the state.
Nationally, 44% of Americans are affected by low-quality air. Arizona’s number is nearly double that. More than 8 in 10 Arizonans, around 86%, live in counties impacted by unhealthy levels of air pollution.
Why Air Quality Matters for Health
Air pollution is not an abstract environmental concern. The American Lung Association links it directly to childhood asthma attacks, impaired lung function and development, lung cancer, heart attacks, strokes and premature death. For children growing up in Phoenix and other Arizona communities, the exposure is not occasional but daily and cumulative.
“Arizonans care about air quality and want clean energy solutions,” said JoAnna Strother, Senior Advocacy Director of the American Lung Association in Arizona. “The combustion of fossil fuels in our energy and transportation sectors generate unhealthy pollution that exacerbates respiratory and cardiovascular diseases including increased asthma attacks, worsened COPD, heart attacks and strokes, and in extreme cases premature death.”
Where Phoenix Ranks
The Phoenix-Mesa metro area ranks among the most polluted cities in the United States across three separate measures. The American Lung Association’s 2026 report places Phoenix 4th in the country for unhealthy ozone days, 15th for annual particle levels and 17th for unhealthy particle days. Those three rankings show the lack of air quality across different dimensions.
Ozone pollution forms when emissions from vehicles, power plants and industrial facilities react with sunlight and heat — conditions Phoenix has in abundance for much of the year. Particle pollution, sometimes called particulate matter or PM2.5, comes from those same sources as well as from wildfires and dust storms, both of which have become more frequent and severe as the climate warms.
Arizonans Want Clean Air
There is broad public support for addressing the problem and the appetite for clean energy solutions crosses political lines.
According to the Arizona Clean Energy Poll 2025, 78% of Arizonans support clean energy, and three in five voters believe Arizona utilities should stop spending money to expand oil and gas infrastructure and transition instead to wind, solar and energy efficiency. The majority believe clean energy is better for health, better for the economy and better for electricity bills.
Three-quarters of voters across party lines support more solar, 74% believe clean energy will create quality jobs and strengthen the Arizona economy, and 82% believe new clean energy projects will improve the health of Arizona families and reduce pollution.
Clean energy could improve the economy. The same poll found that 71% of voters believe wind and solar will keep electricity bills lower and create quality jobs, while 75% believe clean energy would save Arizona families money. For a state where summer electricity bills already strain household budgets, cleaner air could mean lower costs.
What to Do
The American Lung Association is calling on policymakers, utilities and individuals to take action on both clean energy transition and air quality protections. The Lung Action Network connects Arizonans who want to add their voice to advocacy efforts at the state and federal level.
For anyone spending time outdoors in Arizona, whether hiking, running, cycling or spending a morning in the garden, checking daily air quality at AirNow.gov before heading out is a simple habit worth building, particularly through the summer months when ozone levels peak. Limiting outdoor exercise on high ozone or high particle days is one of the most direct ways to protect lung health while longer-term policy and energy transitions take shape.
The full 2026 State of the Air report and Arizona-specific data are available at Lung.org/sota.
