Houston area rises to No. 6 nationally for ozone pollution

Four Gulf Coast counties are heading into warm weather with failing air grades, and Houston’s climb to No. 6 nationally for ozone pollution is a warning that will be felt most by children with asthma, outdoor workers and families trying to stay active outside.

The American Lung Association’s 2026 State of the Air report used air-quality data from 2022, 2023 and 2024 and gave Brazoria, Galveston, Harris and Montgomery counties an F for the annual weighted average of high-ozone days. The Houston-Pasadena metro area moved up one spot from the previous year, keeping the region among the country’s worst ozone metros and showing that the problem extends well beyond Houston’s city limits.

That ranking has immediate consequences in places like southeast Harris County and Pasadena, where traffic, industry and long, hot afternoons can combine to make air harder to breathe. Ozone is a powerful lung irritant. The American Lung Association says it can trigger asthma attacks, harm lung development in children and hit hardest when people work or exercise outdoors. For parents, that can mean more missed practices and more time inside. For workers, it can mean slower shifts, more fatigue and more days when heavy exertion feels risky. For people with asthma or COPD, it can mean more rescue inhaler use and more emergency care when air gets bad.

The scale of the problem reaches far beyond one metro. The report says 44% of Americans, or 152.3 million people, live in places that received failing grades for unhealthy ozone or particle pollution. It also says 46% of American children, or 33.5 million, live in counties that failed at least one air-pollution measure. Another 38% of the U.S. population, 129.1 million people, were exposed to unhealthy ozone levels in the 2022 through 2024 period.

Texas air-quality officials say summer weather makes the problem worse. High-pressure systems, clear skies and stagnant winds help ground-level ozone form and linger. Harris County remains a nonattainment area for the EPA’s 8-hour ozone standard, and the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria region is still moving through ozone nonattainment rulemaking and state implementation plan revisions. For residents across Houston, Pasadena and the surrounding counties, the message is familiar: the spring and summer air can quickly turn into another daily restriction, not just a headline.