Global Courant 2023-04-19 17:00:59
Despite tremendous strides made in reducing air pollution in recent decades, 98% of Californians live in communities with unhealthy levels of smog or fine particles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
About 38.5 million California residents live in a county that received a failing grade in the annual Lung Assn. Report “State of the Air”.which has served as a national scorecard for the two main air pollutants since 2000.
While Southern California has seen fewer days with unhealthy ozone levels in recent years, Greater Los Angeles remains the country’s smogiest metropolitan area, a notorious title the region has held in every report but one for the past 24 years. Meanwhile, the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Visalia are tied for the worst year-round particulate pollution levels.
Humboldt, Lake and Yolo were the only California counties not to receive an F in the report.
The Long Assn. report underlines the ubiquity of unhealthy air in the country’s most populous state. While California has made great strides in reducing smog-forming emissions from cars, it also highlights the daunting challenge environmental regulators face in tackling air pollution and moving the world’s fourth-largest economy away from diesel-powered trucks, ships and trains .
The report also comes as the California Air Resources Board is about to vote on two critical measures that would significantly reduce pollution from trucks, buses and locomotives operating in the state. If approved, these measures would prevent 5,000 premature deaths by 2050, according to clean air advocates.
“You can’t underestimate how important these two rules are combined,” said Will Barrett, national senior director for clean air advocacy at the Lung Assn. “They will save more than 5,000 lives during their implementation, nearly $60 billion in public health benefits and a 90% reduction in cancer risk in rail yards communities.”
Next week, Air Resources Board members will vote on the so-called Advanced Clean Fleets proposal, which would establish zero-emissions benchmarks for fleets of trucks, vans, school buses and garbage trucks.
The board will also consider adopting a rule that would phase out older locomotives, limit idling and establish a framework for zero-emission locomotives.
This policy could have a significant impact in Southern California, where all four counties that make up the South Coast air district received F grades: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and part of San Bernardino. San Bernardino County, a hub of logistics centers and warehouses, had the worst smog pollution from 2019 to 2021, averaging 177 unhealthy ozone days, the report said.
Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-Colton) said she has introduced bills and advocated to address this pollution burden.
“More than 200,000 children live with asthma in Southern California.” Reyes said. “About 60,000 of them live in the Inland Empire with the worst ozone pollution in the country. 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 built on top of homes and elementary schools.
Reyes said the state should focus on cleaning up all local sources of pollution to reduce regional burdens.
State and local officials have the authority to regulate pollution from state vehicles and industrial sources. However, in Southern California — a region that has long failed to meet the ozone standards set by the federal Clean Air Act — air officials have blamed Washington for local pollution.
This month, the South Coast Air Quality Management District sued the US Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the EPA has made it impossible to meet clean air standards in the Los Angeles area.
While smog-forming nitrogen oxides from automobiles will be reduced by more than 70% between 2012 and 2023, emissions from aircraft, locomotives and marine vessels — all of which fall under federal jurisdiction — will increase by nearly 10% during this period, according to the lawsuit. This includes the ports of LA and Long Beach, the largest solid source of smog-forming emissions in the basin.
Wayne Nastri, the air district’s executive officer, said nitrogen oxides from these sources — along with heavy trucks — must be reduced by 60% if the region is to meet federal standards.
“We continue to meet with EPA and work together to develop solutions that can address our unique air quality issues as quickly as possible,” Nastri said in a statement.
“We need the federal government to take responsibility and work with us to develop actions that can really have an impact on air quality in Southern California,” Nastri said.
The Los Angeles Basin has become smog’s poster child since the first major appearance of toxic haze in the early 1940s. The region’s warm, sunny climate cooks exhaust and chimney emissions into lung-scorching smog, while vast mountain ranges trap this pollution.
The task of cleaning the air has only become more difficult due to climate change. With higher temperatures and drier conditions, California has experienced severe wildfires in 2020 and 2021. Hot, sunny conditions are more conducive to smog formation. Such was the case in September 2020 when Los Angeles County saw record-breaking heat and the highest concentrations of smog in 26 years in downtown LA
“I know when we have our wildfires here in California my office phone will ring,” Dr. Sonal Patel, an allergy and immunology specialist, to journalists during the release of the Lung Assn. study. “I know when I see those hazy smog days that my office phone is going to ring because my patients with asthma are going to have problems. Through no fault of their own, they cannot avoid the unhealthy air. I have seen these effects first hand.”
