The American Lung Association has released its annual State of the Air report which underlines the pollution issues facing the state of California ©American Lung Association

Los Angeles continues to experience unhealthy levels of air pollution with five years to go until it is due to stage the Olympics and Paralympics, a study has found.

The American Lung Association has released its annual "State of the Air" report which highlights the sorry state of the air quality for citizens of LA and other areas in the United States.

Around 38.5 million Californian residents live in a county that was hit with a failing grade in the report.

A total of 41 Californian counties, including Los Angeles, received an "F grade" which the report says is "based on the number of days a county’s air reaches unhealthful levels on the Air Quality Index".

Los Angeles remains the city with the worst ozone pollution in the country - a position which it has held for all but one of the 24 years tracked by the State of the Air report.

This year, Bakersfield displaced Fresno as the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution.

It also tied with Visalia as having the country’s worst year-round levels of particle pollution.

The air quality data used in the report is collected at official monitoring sites across the US and looks at ozone and short-term particle pollution which are considered the most dangerous and pervasive air pollutants.

The buildings of downtown Los Angeles are partially obscured in the late afternoon as smog descends on the city ©Getty Images
The buildings of downtown Los Angeles are partially obscured in the late afternoon as smog descends on the city ©Getty Images

"Ozone air pollution is still the most widespread of the pollutants that we track," Katerine Pruitt, national senior director for policy at the American Lung Association told ABC News.

"On the flip side of that is particle pollution, which is continuing to get worse.

"And we found that the number of people living with unhealthy levels of fine particle pollution has almost doubled in the last five years."

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Air Resources Board is set to vote on two measures that aim to reduce pollution from trucks, buses and trains.

Clean air campaigners claim that the policies could save 5,000 lives by 2050.

Eloise Gómez Reyesm, a representative of the California State Assembly, also insisted that the implementation of the measures would have a big impact on the state.

"In Southern California, there are over 200,000 children living with asthma," Reyes told the Los Angeles Times.

"About 60,000 of them live in the Inland Empire with the worst ozone pollution in the nation.

"These families need our help and they need relief from the daily barrage of polluted air that follows truck routes and warehouses that are essentially being built on top of homes and elementary schools."