State of the Air: Air Quality in Nashville Continues to Worsen

When looking at the Nashville skyline on a hot summer day, you’ll often notice it’s clouded in that gray haze known as smog — an environmental phenomenon becoming more prevalent due to worsening air quality, in part caused by increased vehicle emissions.  

Davidson County received a failing grade from the American Lung Association’s recent ”State of the Air” report, noting unhealthy levels of ozone and particle pollution. 

Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, says rapid growth — and the subsequent increase in car traffic — is one of the biggest factors affecting air quality in Nashville. 

“We’ve seen a really dramatic increase in the amount of traffic in the Nashville area over the past 10 years or so,” Garcia says. “And with all of that additional traffic comes air quality problems, more pollution from more cars on the road.”

Poor air quality can pose significant health risks to people with respiratory diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but the American Lung Association says anyone living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution can be affected. 

“Air pollution kills people,” Garcia says. “Air pollution shortens people’s lives. And with smog pollution, we actually see the biggest impact on young kids, so kids between the ages of 0 and 4. That should be a big concern for everybody in the community, and in particular, parents of young children, because that type of pollution hits young kids the hardest.”

People of color in Davidson County are disproportionately affected by air pollution. Predominantly Black neighborhoods in North Nashville — much of which borders Interstate 40 — are exposed to more car traffic, and as a result, subject to worse air quality. 

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“Not only did [I-40] break up the community by putting a big highway in the middle of it, but it has also meant that the predominantly Black community in North Nashville is exposed to higher levels of air pollution from the cars on the highway,” Garcia says. She notes that other interstates like I-65 run through South Nashville, which is home to a large Hispanic population. 

Programs like Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s “Choose How You Move” transit initiative could improve air quality at the local level and help limit the effects of climate change as a whole by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars. 

“Using the local bus system, biking, walking — any type of transportation that reduces the overall number of cars on the road — is going to also help reduce air pollution,” Garcia says. “We can also switch to or incentivize our local community to shift to electric vehicles.”

Additional factors that contribute to air pollution include coal plants located on the outskirts of Davidson County, which have been found to cause hundreds of premature deaths every year, according to a study from the Sierra Club.  

Environmentalists have long encouraged the Tennessee Valley Authority to shift away from coal-powered energy and gas plants and explore clean energy alternatives like solar and wind.