L.A. AIR KEEPS DUBIOUS TITLE
Region tops American Lung Association list as most ozone polluted in the nation, despite improvement
It's a title nobody wants, but the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area was again the most ozone-polluted region in the nation, with Western states also continuing to outpace the East in terms of poor air quality.
That's according to an annual airquality report the American Lung Association released Wednesday.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach region has been ranked the nation's worst ozone-polluted area in 23 of the 24 years the association has produced its “State of the Air” report, though the Southland got a bit of good news this time:
The area improved slightly from last year in terms of unhealthful ozone days and particle pollution days, the report said.
The American Lung Association puts out a new “State of the Air” report every year around Earth Day. This year, the association analyzed three years' worth of air quality data captured by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency monitoring systems to formulate “report cards” for cities across the nation.
“The majority of U.S. counties actually don't have monitors,” the report said, “which means that many communities, especially rural ones, don't have official monitored information on their air quality.”
But with the data available, the report found that more than 98% of California residents live in areas that earned failing grades for unhealthful ozone pollution days, unhealthful particle pollution days or annual particle pollution levels. More than 40% of residents are in areas with failing grades for each of those pollutants.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach area is still the most polluted by smog in the country, the report found, with more than 160 days of high ozone pollution since 2019, retaining its decadeslong “historic distinction” at the top of the list.
Ground level smog poses significant health risks to humans, according to the EPA. It's a powerful respiratory irritant whose effects have been likened to a sunburn of the lung, the agency says, which causes shortness of breath and asthma, and may shorten people's lives.
“Exposure to unhealthy levels of ozone air pollution,” the report said, “makes breathing difficult for more Americans all across the country than
any other single pollutant.”
The region also received failing grades for 24-hour particle pollution and annual particle pollution. It ranked ninth and fourth in those categories, respectively, out of more than 200 metropolitan areas nationwide.
The L.A.-Long Beach region moved down one position in the daily particle pollution count this year, representing a slight improvement in that category of pollution, but moved up one rank higher on the average annual particle pollution distinction.
Though particle pollution is different from smog pollution, its impacts can be just as harmful.
“(It) contains microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems,” according to the EPA. “Some particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter can get deep into your lungs and some may even get into your bloodstream.”
Fine particle pollution, the EPA added, is also the main cause of haze in the United States.
“Some fluctuation is to be expected and does not necessarily represent lasting change,” the report said. “However, at least some of the significant improvement in ozone levels in this year's report can be attributed to the fact that the Clean Air Act has been working.”
The region's air quality watchdog said in a Wednesday statement that there have been long-term improvements in the Southland's pollution and that work continues to cut it further.
“This year, we finalized our most ambitious strategy to cut pollution,” said Kim White, a representative with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, “with a plan that is the first to rely on zeroemissions technologies across all business, industry, and residential sectors where feasible that will further reduce emissions by almost 70% by 2037.”
The AQMD regulates stationary sources of air pollution in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The region, which has had air quality monitoring for decades, has seen an 80% reduction in ozone pollution since the 1950s, White said.
But, she said, the AQMD's authority is limited.
The transportation sector is a major contributor to ground-level smog, according to the EPA. Near constant vehicle traffic on
L.A. and Long Beach freeways, in the ports, and in the skies all contribute to ozone-layer depletion and smog formation.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the freeways that carry trucks to and from the San Pedro Bay complex — particularly the 710 Freeway — are among the major contributors. The global shipping industry accounts for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, for example, more than global air travel.
The AQMD isn't responsible for monitoring nonmobile sources of pollutions, including the shipping industry.
“The bulk of the smogforming emissions in our region are from mobile sources,” White said. “When it comes to the ships, trucks, planes and trains that support goods movement, the federal government is largely responsible for the rules that directly impact our ability to meet air quality standards and protect the health of our communities.
“There is no path to meeting air quality standards,” she added, “without massive emission reductions from federally regulated sources.”
Port officials have repeatedly acknowledged the role the ports play in contributing to pollution. They have worked to reduce emissions — with a joint goal of having entirely zero-emission cargo equipment by 2030 and a zero-emissions truck fleet by 2035 — and also spend money on projects in nearby neighborhoods to reduce impacts from their operations.
But even so, emissions at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have risen significantly since 2020, which officials have attributed to unprecedented cargo ship congestion during the pandemic.
Local governments, for their part, have attempted to persuade shippers to go green.
The Long Beach City Council, for example, passed a resolution on the eve of the lung association publishing its report that calls on maritime shippers at the Port of Long Beach to adopt currently available emission-reduction technology and take concrete steps toward ensuring a zero-emissions fleet by 2030.
The Los Angeles City Council passed a similar motion in 2021, asking much the same of its shippers at the Port of L.A.
The Los Angeles area, though, is also home to more than its fair share of refineries and industrial facilities, which contribute to air pollution as well and do fall within the AQMD's jurisdiction.
On that front, the agency said, its rules are helping make progress.
“(Particle pollution) levels in the South Coast Air Basin continue to decline,” White said, “and last year, the region saw the lowest (particle pollution) levels ever recorded due to continued emission reductions and favorable weather conditions.”
The lung association's report also found that ozone pollution has improved, not only in the Southland but also nationwide. The biggest reason for that, the report said, is increased environmental regulations, including the Clean Air Act and the efforts of local regulators to combat greenhouse gas emissions.
“We found that 19.3 million fewer people are living in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone pollution, also known as smog,” the lung association's national president and CEO, Harold Wimmer, said in a statement. “This is why it is crucial to continue our efforts to ensure that every person in the U.S. has clean air to breathe.”
Still, 120 million Americans live in places with unhealthful air pollution, the report said, and not all communities have benefitted from the improvements.
Nearly half of those 120 million people living with unhealthful air on a regular basis, the report said, are people of color, who are 64% more likely to live in a county with a failing grade.
The same is true for Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The residents most likely to live by freeways, refineries and other industrial facilities, for example, have historically been people who are in poverty and communities of color. The region also has a legacy of housing discrimination, which helped push Black people, in particular, into those areas.
In Long Beach, those who live closest to the port and the 710 Freeway tend to be low-income and people of color, and those communities have worse health outcomes than the city as a whole.
Many people also live in areas that have been dubbed “park poor.” While both Long Beach and Los Angeles have stated their desire to increase access to green space for all residents, there's still much work to be done.
And even with the improvements — and recent better-than-average air quality in the greater L.A. area, thanks to the high levels of rain throughout the winter — there's still one big challenge slowing down real success: climate change.
“The three years covered by (the report) ranked among the seven hottest years on record globally,” the report said. “High ozone days and spikes in particle pollution related to heat, drought and wildfires are putting millions of people at risk and adding challenges to the work that states and cities are doing across the nation to clean up air pollution.”
Hotter temperatures have put states in the Western U.S. at greater risk for wildfires, which can burn fiercely for long periods of time. Those blazes create additional particle pollution in affected communities.
Smoke plumes that emerged from the wildfires that raged in California in 2020, for example, were so massive that they spread all the way to the East Coast.
But the excess pollution caused by wildfires isn't the only challenge. Higher temperatures in the West have created dry, sunny skies and frequent stagnation, the report said, further contributing to the number of unhealthful ozone level days in the region.
“Simply,” the report said, “climate change is undercutting the progress we would have made.”
The lung association's report is available at lung.org.