ROME, Ga. — Roughly a decade ago, according to a new report on air quality improvements around the country, Rome, Georgia would have "good air days" only about 13.5% of the time. Over the course of a year, that would work out to fewer than 50 days.
Ten years later by 2022, the report says, more than 90% of days in Rome were "good air days" - almost 330 days.
That improvement isn't just remarkable, according to the air quality trends report published by Consumer Affairs. It's better than anywhere else in America.
The report highlights the top areas for air quality around the country - with cities in Washington, Hawaii and Idaho rounding out the best of the best. Longview, Washington, for instance sees "good air quality" days on more than than 99.5% of its days.
Rome can't quite compare to that, but it's come a long way.
"The Rome metropolitan area covers about 510 square miles and includes the Appalachian Mountain foothills northwest of Atlanta. Between 2012 and 2022, its bad air score decreased by about 89%, from 0.866 to 0.097. Among the 25 most-improved metros, it had the third-highest percentage of good air days in 2022 (90.25%)," the report notes.
The percent change in good air days from 2012 to 2022 in Rome was 76.83% - by comparison, second-place Lafayette-West Lafayette, Indiana's change was 51.92%.
According to Consumer Affairs, the report examined air quality index data for cities and metro areas from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2012-2022. Using this data, they developed a "bad air score" using the number of days falling within an air quality index value with the following multipliers:
- Moderate (x1)
- Unhealthy for sensitive groups (x1.5)
- Unhealthy (x2)
- Very unhealthy (x2.5)
- Hazardous (x3)
"The sum is then divided by the total number of days in the year with a registered AQI value to get the bad air score. The higher the bad air score is, the worse the air quality is. Only metro areas with a minimum of 180 days of reported AQI data in a year were included in the analysis," the report states.
Consumer Affairs offered the following example for its methodology:
Bad air score for El Centro, California in 2022
- 122 moderate air days(1) + 23 unhealthy for sensitive groups days(1.5) + 4 unhealthy days(2) + 2 very healthy days(2.5) + 5 hazardous days(3) = 184.5
- 184.5/238 days with registered AQI in 2022 = 0.775 bad air score