Air Quality Still a Major Concern

Mark Grossi writes a San Joaquin Valley environmental blog that  is frequently published in the Fresno Bee under the title "Earth Log."  Two of his recent items on air quality certainly got my attention as a valley resident.  One concerned soot and the other ozone.

The soot item was a study done on rhesus macaque monkeys in 2008.  That year saw a huge number of wildfires, over 2,000.  The air consequently had high concentrations of PM-2.5.  That's the designation standing for "particulate matter" or small particles under 2.5 microns in size.  It is often composed of smoke, diesel exhaust and grains of dust.  These tiny particles can lodge in the lungs.  Researchers at the University of California at Davis tracked the progress of monkey babies born that year and compared their health records to those of monkeys born the next year when the air quality was better.  They found that monkeys born that year were more susceptible to bacterial infections and have reduced lung capacity overall.  Significantly, monkey lungs are practically the same as those of humans.  And in what Grossi termed a "chilling" development, thanks to this year's extreme drought leading to a high dust count in the air, current PM-2.5 readings are even higher than those recorded in the 2008 wildfire year.  This doesn't portend good news for children's health.  The one partial silver lining is that the monkeys studied lived outside and were thus exposed longer per day to the particulates than most human babies are.  But it does point up an inescapable reality: society pays and people pay a serious price for environmental pollution. 

The other item was about ozone, one of the main components of photochemical "smog."  In the early 1990s the San Joaquin Valley regularly had 130 days a year when the federal 8-hour ozone standard was exceeded.  The geography of the area, a bowl enclosed by the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east, makes it difficult in the absence of strong wind or precipitation to clear out the air and prevent pollutants from accumulating.  The good news is that the region has made real progress.  Thanks to such actions as smog controls and better gas mileage for vehicles, phasing out older, dirty power plants, farm machinery and well motors, and banning fireplace usage on bad air days, 2013 set a new record.  There were "only" 91 ozone violation days.  But the bad news is that 91 was still second worst in the nation.  Only the South Coast Air Basin comprising Los Angeles and its environs with 93 violations in 2013 did worse.  It is a real achievement to have reduced the number of bad smog days by 30%.  But at the same time, it is only realistic to acknowledge that the situation is still bad and there remains a long way to go.