Air quality debated before Cal game
When the Cal football team crushed eighth-ranked Washington State 37-3 on Friday night in Berkeley, air regulators were not happy.
Cal’s victory came on the worst day by far for fine-particle pollution ever recorded in the Bay Area. Officials at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said Monday that the game took place when particle pollution exceeded a standard set by federal regulators. Some fans wore masks amid the haze, which was caused by the Wine Country wildfires.
“The staff had a disagreement, I’ll say that nicely, with Cal,” Karen Mitchoff, a director at the air district, said at a meeting of the district’s executive committee Monday.
The issue relates to the presence of particles that measure up to 2.5 microns — 0.0001 inches — in diameter. These tiny particles, which have increasingly worried pollution regulators, can lodge in the lungs and cause short- and long-term health problems, ranging from coughing and asthma to increased risk of heart attacks.
Since 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for the 24-hour average levels of those particles has been 35 micrograms per cubic meter. The day of the BearsCougars game measured 48.5 microns per cubic meter, according to Lisa Fasano, an air district spokeswoman.
A spokesman for Cal Athletics noted that air quality was improving by evening. Indeed, by 7 p.m., not long before kickoff, hourly levels of fine particles at a Berkeley monitoring station had fallen into what the air district rates as the “moderate” range, whereas they had been in the “unhealthy” range around midday. They continued to fall during the game.
“We made (the) decision to play the game only after careful consultation with our medical staff, the chancellor’s office, and officials from Washington State and the Pac-12 Conference,” the Cal Athletics spokesman said, adding that the Bears received data and forecasts from the air district.
Stanford’s football game Saturday against Oregon was played in cleaner air, regulators said.
Cal uses an NCAA standard to help decide whether to go forward with a game. The NCAA will call off games if the air quality index measures 200 or higher (150 to 200 is rated by the government as “unhealthy”).
Bay Area air quality officials question whether the NCAA is incorporating the EPA’s current 24-hour fine-particle standards into its decision-making. At the meeting Monday, air district CEO Jack Broadbent said it is possible that the NCAA is relying on an “old” standard, which would allow games to be played with fine-particle pollution levels measuring up to 65 micrograms per cubic meter for 24 hours, rather than the current standard of 35.
“There was a lot of back and forth between ourselves and the Cal folks,” Broadbent said. He noted that the district provides information, as opposed to recommending whether or not a game should be played; and the Cal spokesman said that indeed the air district did not recommend that the game be canceled.
An NCAA spokesman pointed to the organization’s general guidance on air quality for games and referred further questions to the schools and the Pacific-12 Conference.
“The Pac-12 Conference has been in consultation with Cal throughout this process and is fully supportive of how Cal handled it in the interest of health and safety for studentathletes and fans,” Andrew Walker, head of communications for the Pac-12, said in an email.
The Pac-12 decided at 3:30 p.m. on Friday that the game would continue as scheduled. At that time, hourly fine-particle measurements were still in the “unhealthy” range.
Strawberry Canyon was enveloped by a smoky haze, and a burning smell and occasional falling ash were noticeable before the game. Many fans reported a strain in climbing the hill to Memorial Stadium.
Cal announced a season-low crowd of 26,244, which may have had as much to do with the Friday night kickoff — most games are on Saturday — as the air quality. A handful of Cal players who were queried said the conditions didn’t affect their play. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Rusty Simmons contributed to this report.