Woo hoo. We're No. 10!

Metro Charlotte improved two notches but still ranks among the nation's handful of smoggiest cities, the American Lung Association said Tuesday in its annual rankings.

The group's 2010 "State of the Air" report ranks the Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury metropolitan area 10th-highest among most ozone-polluted cities. Charlotte ranked eighth last year.

This year's rankings are based on federally reported pollution data for 2006-08.

The area's slight improvement reflects cleaner air in the East and Midwest as anti-pollution rules have taken effect over the past decade, the lung association says.

North Carolina's smog levels reached the lowest point on record last year, the N.C. Division of Air Quality has reported. Electric utilities, prompted by a 2002 state law, have dramatically reduced emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides.

Improved rankings by 14 of the 25 smoggiest cities, including Charlotte, "prove with hard data that cleaning up air pollution produces healthier air," Mary Partridge, the lung association's national board chair, said in a statement. "However, more needs to be done."

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Bruce Henderson, here.

Wait. This still isn't great news. How can we become No. 50? Here's one timely tip: