Lung experts say as air quality is affected, rates of this type of heart disease are on the rise. Here are ways you can work to mitigate your risk.
Last spring the American Lung Association’s 2025 State of the Air report, looking back over a recent three-year period, indicated that 156 million people—25 million more than last year’s report—are living in areas that received an “F” grade for pollution.
This bears poor implications for U.S. respiratory health and collective cancer risk, perhaps particularly for lung cancer—said Harold Wimmer, President and CEO of the American Lung Association: “Families across the U.S. are dealing with the health impacts of air pollution every day, and extreme heat and wildfires are making it worse. Air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick, and leading to low birth weight in babies. This year’s report shows the dramatic impact that air pollution has on a growing number of people.”
Now, according to breaking new research reported in September 2025, there’s another way the air we breathe may be harming our health. This month at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Madrid, a cardiovascular public health report revealed that people who live in areas with the worst levels of air pollution are 27% more likely to develop heart failure compared with those living in the cleanest air. Also of concern, stroke risk is 7% higher in the worst areas, compared to the best, the study suggests.
Heart health researchers from Queen Mary University of London conducted the analysis among British participants, but the issue likewise applies to Americans—6.7 million of whom are currently diagnosed with heart failure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The American Lung Association listed what they determined were the top 10 regions for ozone pollution, year-round small particle pollution, and short-term particle pollution, such as from wildfires in areas like California and the 2023 event in Canada from which many Americans were exposed to smoke. Some of the regions listed were parts of Southern California, around Los Angeles and San Diego, parts of Northern California, including greater Sacramento, areas around Dallas and Houston, Cleveland-Akron, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, greater Detroit, and parts of Washington and Oregon.
Heart failure is a type of heart disease in which the heart fails to pump blood effectively enough to meet the body’s needs, enabling blood to pool into the lungs. This can cause shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, weakness, weight gain, swelling in the lower body, or worse: “In 2023, heart failure was mentioned on 452,573 death certificates (and responsible for 14.6% of all causes of death),” the CDC noted in 2024.
Using data from the UK Biobank study, the researchers tracked the heart health and pollution exposure of 299,323 people between 2010 and 2020. In particular, they looked at the average levels of PM2.5—particulate matter with diameters less than 2.5 µm—in each person’s area of residence. Sources of PM2.5 can include “construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks, or fires,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notes. “Exposure to increased concentrations of PM2.5 over a few hours to weeks can trigger cardiovascular disease-related heart attacks and death.”
Despite that knowledge, the EPA moved on September 12 to end requirements for industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions, including coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, and steel mills, The New York Times reported last week. This would mean that carbon dioxide and methane—key drivers of climate change, pollution, and the associated health risks—would go largely unchecked.
A report from the American Heart Association, which also links air pollution to cardiovascular disease, underscores the stakes: “The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events and wildfires, the rising levels of air pollution, and other sequelae [consequences] of fossil fuel combustion threaten the health of all our patients,” it says. “Just as physicians a generation ago spoke out against the horrors of nuclear war … it is time to raise our collective voices on behalf of our patients, to call out the malign influence of the fossil fuel industry.”
As individuals, trying to follow the healthiest lifestyle possible, including walking, can help you manage your heart failure risk. And, support elected leaders making change for healthier air.
For daily wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
- Want To Know How Long You’ll Live? New Research Says One Simple Maneuver Could Hint at Heart Disease and Cancer Risk
- “How I Knew I Had Myocarditis”: A 46-Year-Old’s Brush with Heart Failure Following COVID Infection
- Only 50% of Americans Who Need This Heart Attack Prevention Drug Are Taking It, Say Researchers
- Want a Healthier Heart? Exercise at This Hour, Says New Research
