
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994                   TAG: 9410200099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

URBAN AIR GETTING CLEANER

The air in 43 metropolitan regions, home to nearly 100 million Americans, still is failing health standards, although air quality in general is improving, the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday.

The EPA, in its annual assessment of urban air pollution, said 11 cities or counties came into federal air quality compliance for smog-causing ozone pollution during the past year. But 43 others still are too dirty. Seven, including Norfolk and and Smyth County, Va., failed to meet a 1993 deadline under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

Twenty-two regions, including most of the nation's biggest cities, continue to have such severe smog pollution that there is little hope of meeting federal health standards until late in the next decade. Los Angeles, which has the worst air pollution, won't meet federally approved pollution levels until 2010 at the earliest.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner said the trend toward cleaner air nevertheless was encouraging news that pollution-control efforts - both tougher automobile emission controls and curbs on industrial pollution - ``are yielding real results.''

The agency found 48 of 91 regional areas singled out in 1990 for unacceptable air because of smog-causing ozone have since come into federal compliance. The number of people exposed to unacceptable air pollution was reduced from 140 million to less than 100 million.

by CNB