Drought slows clean air efforts
An increase in dust and wildfires has hurt the Central Valley’s air quality, a report says.
Despite increasingly aggressive clean air and fuel standards, years of drought are taking a toll on California’s air quality, the American Lung Assn. said in a new report.
The portion of California’s Central Valley from Fresno to Madera was the region most polluted with microscopic particulates, or soot, in the nation on any given day in 2013, thanks in large part to the changing climate and drought, according to an annual report on air quality released Wednesday by the association.
“Continuing drought and heat may have increased dust, grass fires and wildfires” that have hurt the Central Valley’s air quality in short-term particle pollution, the report stated. “The impact of climate change is particularly apparent in the West, where the heat and drought create situations ripe for episodes of high-particle days.”
The report evaluated metropolitan areas based on recorded levels of ozone, the main ingredient in smog, and also measured particles that tend to build up during colder winter months. It looked at cities’ annual average and their average in a 24hour period. The report used data gathered between 2011 and 2013.
In both time frames, a swath of California’s Central Valley topped the rankings for unhealthy particulate pollution. The Fresno-to-Madera region was the most polluted year-round for the second year in a row, and the worst in a 24-hour cycle.
Bakersfield was ranked second, the area from Visalia to Hanford was third and the area from Modesto to Merced was fourth for shortterm and annual particle pollution.
The Los Angeles-to-Long Beach region performed worse in the 24-hour rankings this year than it did the previous year, the report noted.
And despite great strides in recent years, the region again topped the list of the nation’s metropolitan areas with the worst smog for 2013, which it has done in all but one of the association’s 16 annual reports.
Despite the high rank, the report said the region “exemplified” progress in reducing smog.
Its three-year average for particle pollution between 2011 and 2013 was its best since the report began and showed a one-third reduction in its number of unhealthy air days.
Ranking fifth on the list of smog-polluted areas nationally was the area from Sacramento to Roseville.
Smog forms in warm, sunny weather with little wind. More than 138 million people, or 44% of the nation, live in areas with unhealthy air, according to the report.
Still, the situation has improved over the last 10 years.
“Even the more polluted cities had significantly fewer unhealthy ozone days than they had a decade ago,” the report stated.
Cleaner air is linked to stronger lungs in Southern California children. Poor air quality can most adversely affect the young and old, and those with lung disease, asthma, heart disease and diabetes.
The report said that the Environmental Protection Agency’s current ozone air quality standards are “woefully inadequate” and called for the government to adopt stricter standards proposed by the EPA last year.