STORY PRODUCED BY THE CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
Michigan placed 19th in a recent report scoring the states on their vulnerability to environmental risks and adoption of comprehensive clean energy policies.
They were graded on such factors as air quality, extreme heat risk, natural hazard vulnerability, energy efficiency policies, electricity generation emissions, sector and flood risk, according to the report by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports research on health care.
The report highlights that although policies don’t always relate to public health directly, they still can affect public health, said Matt Eckelman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University and the lead author of the study
“We’re trying to put public health forward as a major consideration for any kind of policymaking, so the energy department in Michigan sees their policies as important for protecting public health,” Eckelman said. “And so does the water department, transportation department, building code department, everybody.”
Those scores were added up and averaged to calculate their overall rank, said Melanie Marino, a doctoral student at Northeastern University and co-author of the report.
Michigan ranked 15th for energy efficiency policies and did especially well with standards for appliances and buildings, but lower for transportation, she said.
There’s a significant gap between the robustness of the top states’ energy policies compared to the rest of the states, meaning Michigan still has a lot of work to do, she said.
The state ranked 33rd for air quality and 25th for health risk from extreme heat.
“Michigan may not be perceived as a place that gets very hot, but our indicator includes other aspects of how people experience health risks from extreme heat, like preexisting health conditions, their housing situation, things like tree cover and air quality,” Marino said.
For natural hazard risk to health care facilities, the state placed seventh and sixth for flood risk.
The state placed 35th for electricity emissions and 32nd for greenhouse gas emissions in the health care sector, she said.
Eckelman said the researchers anticipate doing the analysis annually to track how states compare with themselves as time goes on.
“Every state has its own history and issues that it's dealing with, like its own geography, so looking at how states perform over time is going to be a lot more meaningful,” he said.
Michigan’s overall ranking is expected to improve because of recent changes to the energy system in the state, he said.
“There’s been lots of coal plant retirements, and natural gas has increased a lot in terms of its share in the state electricity mix,” Eckelman said.
Wisconsin ranked close to Michigan at 21st. The two other states sharing borders with Michigan – Indiana and Ohio – placed significantly lower, 37th and 31st respectively.
Eckelman said that’s most likely due to differences in state policies related to their electricity mixes.
Kezia Ofosu Atta, the advocacy director for the American Lung Association in Michigan, said Michigan has seen more “unhealthy air” days so far this year than last year.
That's mostly attributable to the summer smoke from Canadian wildfires, Ofosu Atta said.
Detroit, Ann Arbor, Warren, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Portage were among the top 25 cities nationally most polluted by particulate matter in 2025, according to this year’s American Lung Association State of the Air report.
Particulate matter are pollutants carried by wildfire smoke, according to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.
An unhealthy air day means the air quality is poor and harmful for people with preexisting respiratory conditions like asthma, said Ofosu Atta.
“The air can irritate their lungs and cause a whole lot of complications such as respiratory harm, worsened asthma, worsened chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the development of asthma in children,” she said.
Michigan residents have a higher rate of asthma than the national average because of factories and industrialization next to neighborhoods, Ofosu Atta said.
Recently Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed lung health provisions in the state budget but few made it into the final budget passed by the Legislature, Ofosu Atta said.
“There's certainly more work to be done in Michigan to improve the air quality of the state,” she said.