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WASHINGTON — Breathers note: the Environmental Protection Agency will begin issuing daily alerts year-round for smog and soot pollution in about 150 places prone to those problems. The EPA hopes its expanded "Air Quality Index," until now used solely for summertime smog, becomes widely used. The two reports will be posted daily on an EPA Web site, EPA AirNow: http://www.epa.gov/air now, with color-coded forecasts for about 150 cities, counties and other monitoring locations. "We're finally able after a whole lot of work to add air particle pollution," said Jeff Hoimstead, EPA assistant administrator in charge of air quality. "It will be year-round for both, but we don't expect there will be problems in winter with ozone." That's because smog, or ozone pollution, forms in warm weather as heat and sunlight are needed to cook the pollutants. Currently, about 300 places get smog alerts, but those won't automatically be the ones that get the soot alerts. "Fine particles and ozone pollution tend to be in the same areas, but that's not always the case, so some areas might not need to worry about ozone," Holmstead said.
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