Wildfire Smoke Increasingly Getting Clean Air Act Exemption, Investigation Finds
More than 21 million Americans are breathing air that’s dirtier than official records indicate. That’s according to a new investigation from the California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian. An obscure rule in the Clean Air Act allows regions to strike so-called “natural” and “exceptional events,” like wildfires, from their pollution data on grounds that they are beyond the control of local air regulators. Since 2016, counties in California have had 166 days of pollution forgiven. And this past summer during the Canadian wildfires, more than 20 other states invoked it. As wildfires become…
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