In recent years, with the rapid economic development of Bohai Economic bay area in China, the atmospheric environmental pollution problem has been of wide concern and has attracted great public attention. In this paper, the data of PM₁₀, SO₂, CO, NO₂, O₃ and PM_2.5 in 12 cities located around the Bohai Bay area of China were collected in 2016. These 12 cities were divided into coastal and non-coastal areas according to distance from the sea. On the basis of data analysis, the air quality pollution and its distribution in the bay area were researched. The results indicated that the rates failing to comply with National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) of PM_2.5 were 6.39% and 34.15% in coastal cities and non-coastal cities, respectively, and the noncompliance rates of PM₁₀ were 12.84% and 28.96%, respectively, with O₃ exceeding 23.50% and 31.69%, respectively, and noncoastal cities were higher than the coastal cities. If complying with WHO’s concentration limit of PM_2.5 (10 μg/m³), the number of noncompliance days is 7.4 times as high as that of NAAQS, and some cities could even not meet the standard throughout the year. There are significant differences between PM_2.5 in coastal cities and non-coastal cities due to the air mass and its own industrial differences, while the difference on O₃ is not significant due to similar sources of pollution in the bay area. The pollution situation in the bay area showed that PM_2.5 had heavy pollution in January, March, November and December, while the atmosphere in July, August and September was the least polluted and did not show the “weekend effect” due to the effects of the local economy. On the whole, there is still a serious problem of air pollution in the Bohai Bay area.