|
SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT
INSTITUTE Failure in Madrid; European Green Deal Adopted CCC Board of Governors Adopt Climate Change and Sustainability Goals Doomsday Clock Set at 100 Seconds to Midnight SEI Proposes Network of Weather/Air Quality Stations Air Pollution Worsening in Los Angeles Region New Climate Corps Fellow at City College In the Classroom: Resources from Carleton College UC Certificate for Citizen Scientists News Briefs |
 Smog over downtown Los Angeles
Air Pollution Worsening in Los Angeles Region
Ask anyone who was here in the sixties and seventies, and she’ll be quick to tell you just how much better the air quality is today. It’s true. The federal Clean Air Act of 1970 and the work of the California Air Resources Board, which requires even stricter emission controls than the EPA, have led to a dramatic improvement in the air we breathe. The air is far cleaner than forty or fifty years ago. That said, we still have worse smog than anywhere else in the nation, and in recent years we’ve regressed, along with the rest of the country. Experts predict that Trump administration policies will lead to a continuing decline in the immediate future. Several factors combine to make the Los Angeles region the smog capital of the country. A peculiar topography of large mountains surrounding a basin and predominant on-shore breezes create an inversion layer, trapping emissions. Add three hundred days of sunlight a year and some eight million vehicles and you have lots of photochemical smog generation. Unfortunately, climate change will make matters worse, as more heat speeds up the chemical process that forms ozone, one of the worst pollutants, and increases air stagnation. The recent increase in bad ozone days has been a particular worry. A gas formed by a series of chemical reactions involving nitrogen oxide gases, volatile organic compounds, and sunlight, ozone can have a corrosive effect on the lungs. Children, teens, and the elderly are especially vulnerable, besides those suffering from lung or cardiovascular diseases. In Southern California, there was a 10% increase in the number of deaths due to ozone from 2010 to 2017. Ozone is not evenly distributed, however. While areas from the coast to downtown have seen a considerable improvement over the last twenty-five years, the valleys have not done nearly as well. Downtown saw only four bad ozone days in 2018, compared to an average of 30 in 1995. The Westside had only two. The San Fernando Valley, on the other hand, averaged 49 days, no better than its average of 50 in the mid-nineties. But with onshore breezes blowing smog eastward, San Bernardino County was considerably worse than that, with over 100 bad days, the same number it averaged in 1995. According to the American Lung Society’s latest “State of the Air” report, “If you live in San Bernardino County, the air you breathe may put your health at risk.” It gave the county failing grades in smog/ozone levels and said its poor overall air quality is a health threat to over two million residents who are already dealing with asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, et al. In future issues, we will look at what’s being done (or not done) at the state and local level to address the recent deterioration. Additional reading: https://healthoftheair.org/uploads/324/27b2db2b11644bfda45fd50f9e7dfc3c.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/pubs/AIR-QUALITY-Final_508.pdf https://earther.gizmodo.com/why-do-heat-waves-make-ozone-pollution-so-much-worse-1827319433 https://gizmodo.com/why-air-pollution-has-always-been-a-problem-in-l-a-an-1572151647 |
