MERRILLVILLE | Close to 1.2 million Northwest Indiana residents battle lung disease.

And in Lake County, the nation's 16th-most polluted county, 11,000 children suffer from asthma.

Those were some of the statistics delivered Friday by American Lung Association of Indiana CEO Nancy Turner.

Turner was keynote speaker at the annual meeting of South Shore Clean Cities, Inc., a nonprofit corporation dedicated to decreasing dependence on foreign oil and advancing clean-air objectives.

Asthma contributes to school and job absenteeism, weakening productivity levels in the state, Turner said.

"Good air quality is key to managing asthma and (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)," she told an audience of about 50.

Several initiatives planned by South Shore Clean Cities are aimed at reducing air pollution, Carl Lisek, the organization's coordinator, said.

Plans are to encourage local municipalities to convert as many public vehicles as possible to alternative fuel use, Lisek said.

"We want to have every school bus operating on alternative fuels," he said.

Clean Cities late last year launched an awareness program urging the reduction of heavy-duty truck engine idling.

Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicate that long-haul combination trucks often idle up to eight hours per day, more than 300 days per year, typically consuming as much 1,900 gallons of fuel each year per truck.

Solutions include technological advances such as auxiliary power units and automatic idle systems.

Clean Cities also promotes the use of E85, an alternative fuel made of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent petroleum based fuel, and is working with locally owned fuel station chains to install E85 pumps, Lisek said.