smog sends 53,000 people to the hospital each summer and triggers more than six million asthma attacks in the eastern United States, according to estimates released by clean air activists. Smog created in the summer is called ground-level ozone, the main culprit in what environmentalists believe is a public health crisis generated by coal-fired power plants. "Despite popular impressions, this is not just a Northeast problem,' said Conrad Schneider, technical and policy coordinator for the Clean Air Task Force ( catf ). "From Texas to Illinois and from Georgia to Maine, and everywhere in between, people are admitted to the hospital for serious, prolonged respiratory distress due to ozone smog,' the task force added.

The national campaign against dirty air highlights the problem by noting that Texas had 660,000 asthma attacks, New York more than 500,000 and Washington, dc , 800 hospital admissions due to summer smog.