What is smog?

"Smog" is a common term for visible air pollution, which has two main components: ground-level ozone and particulate matter. However, very often people use "smog" to refer specifically to ozone pollution while "soot" refers to particulate matter.

What is ozone?

What is particulate matter?

Where does air pollution come from?

What are the health effects of ozone and particulate matter?

Health effects of ozone

When inhaled, ozone irritates the respiratory system and can cause shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, and chest pain, as well as exacerbate allergies and respiratory diseases such as asthma. (Read more). In fact, recent studies have shown that ozone can actually cause asthma in children who are active outdoors in smoggy areas. Over 50,000 Californians are hospitalized yearly because of severe asthma attacks, and more young children are hospitalized every year for asthma than for any other cause. (Read more). Ozone not only aggravates the respiratory system temporarily; prolonged inhalation of unsafe levels of ozone can reduce lung function and development in children and permanently damage lung tissue.

Health effects of particulate matter (PM)

Nationwide, air pollution causes between 50,000 and 100,000 premature deaths per year, and particulates account for a majority of these. In fact, PM accounts for more deaths than homicides and automobile accidents combined every year. Non-fatal health impacts of PM include reduced lung function, heart problems, and aggravation of respiratory illnesses, such as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, chronic obstructive lung disease, and pneumonia. PM can accelerate death from other causes, such as lung cancer, and exposure to the small particles, even for short periods of time, can cause heart damage and trigger heart attacks. Read more here.

Who suffers from the impacts of air pollution?

- Greenpeace

Although smog is harmful to everyone's lungs, certain groups are disproportionately at risk. They include: 

Children: Children spend more time outdoors than adults, and are at high risk because their lungs are still developing. Children are also more adversely impacted by air pollution than adults because they breathe more pounds of air per body mass. As a result, children suffer more than adults from asthma and other respiratory ailments. In fact, asthma is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism, accounting for over 10 million missed school days per year.

The elderly: Pollution-induced asthma attacks can be especially dangerous, and even fatal, to the elderly who suffer from more respiratory tract infections and previous lung damage than younger adults.

Adults who are active outdoors: Even the healthiest adults who exercise or work outdoors can experience lung damage when pollution levels are high.

People who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases: Around 2.2 million Californians suffer from asthma. Asthmatics are at risk because they have decreased lung function, and pollution can greatly exacerbate the severity of attacks.  

Low-income and people of color: These communities are at a greater risk because they often lack access to culturally- and linguistically- responsive health care, so respiratory ailments, such as asthma, often go undiagnosed and untreated. 29 percent of Latino children lack health insurance and thus lack access to both treatment and preventative care. In California, the asthma death rate for African American children is over four times greater than that of white children.

How does air pollution affect agriculture?

California is the nation's most productive agricultural state, boasting sales of $32 billion in 2005. Yet agricultural operations contribute significantly to California's air pollution problems, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley. The pollution caused by agricultural activities such as land cultivation, pesticide application, and crop harvest do more than harm the health of Valley residents: it also costs Valley farmers as much as $270 million each year in damaged crops.

The Air Quality Effects Laboratory is currently researching ozone impacts on plants in California.

Read an article about the effects of pollution on agriculture: Farmers' foe: Smog damage to crops costs billions (7/16/06).

How bad is the air in California?

Links to many different kinds of bad air data: air quality trends, real time pollution level maps and monitoring readouts, studies and much more.

• Daily Air Quality Status and Forecast (SJVAPCD)
• Air Quality Maps of the San Joaquin Valley with maps displaying ambient air quality data collected by the real-time air monitoring networks operated by the Valley Air District and CARB
• Today's Ozone and Particulate Matter Movies (AIRNow)
• 2003 - present Annual Ozone Summary (CARB)
• CARB California Air Quality Data - most recent air quality, yesterday's ozone, historical air quality, California almanac, air quality monitoring network, special studies, etc.
• Real time query tool (CARB) - by county, air basin or part of state
• 2003 California Almanac of Emissions and Air Quality (CARB) - past, current and future air quality trends
• Detailed Ozone Exceedances 1998-2001
• Community Health Air Pollution Information System (CHAPIS) - find your neighborhood on the interactive air pollution map
• CARB air quality data and statistics - good for detailed searches
• Diesel Soot Health Impacts (Clean Air Task Force) - statistics on the effect of diesel pollution on your community

What is the Air Quality Index?

• To find out more about the AQI, including air quality guides for ozone and PM as well as publications in both Spanish and English, visit the AIRNow website.
• Learn about the AQI forecast in your area for today or tomorrow.
• View a chart to be used to modify outdoor activities on high-AQI days.

How bad is the air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley?

A drawing by a 3rd grader from Merced County

Ozone:

Kern, Fresno, Tulare, and Merced Counties are among the top ten counties in the nation for the number of at-risk people exposed to dangerously high levels of ozone pollution. [Read more]

Particulate Matter (PM):

Despite some progress toward cleaner air, the Valley is still home to some of the worst PM pollution in the country. Five of the Valley's eight counties are on the American Lung Association's 2005 Top-25 Worst Polluted Counties list. [Read more] 

PM-10 concentrations recorded over the last few years have shown improvement over the years before, however, certain types of monitors operated by the Air District have continued to show violations of the federal health standard.

Health:

Children in the Valley are more than 35% more likely to have asthma than their national counterparts. Rates of asthma are highest among children who live in Fresno and Kings Counties, where over 20% of children ages 0-17 have been diagnosed with asthma, compared with 15.8% Valley wide. [Read more (PDF)].

Nearly 12,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley Air District are hospitalized each year for asthma, including more than 5,000 children. [Read more]

How much does air pollution cost?

• A conservative estimate of the Valley’s annual school absenteeism due to asthma totals approximately 808,000 absences, accounting for lost revenue to regional school districts of at least $26 million annually. Read more.
• In Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield, Salinas, and Stockton alone, the financial cost of asthma is more than $85 million per year. (Asthma and Allergy Foundation website)
• It has been reported that the annual costs of asthma in the United States are between $8 billion and $11 billion (1997 dollars). Hospitalizations account for the largest proportion of costs of asthma treatment, especially for very young children. Smith, David et al. (1997), A National Estimate of the Economic Costs of Asthma, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Vol.156, pp. 787-793.)
  
  
• According to the Air District, ozone pollution causes as much as $270 million a year in damaged agricultural crops in the Valley. 
• Particle Civics: How Cleaner Air in California Will Save Lives and Save Money - Environmental Working Group
  In California, respiratory illnesses caused or made worse by airborne particulate matter (PM) are responsible for 9,300 deaths, 16,000 hospital visits, 600,000 asthma attacks and five million lost work days each year. This report shows that by saving lives and preventing illnesses, tougher standards could save more than half a billion dollars a year.

How does air pollution affect our national parks?

Air pollution from the San Joaquin Valley drifts up and reduces visibility levels in the national parks. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have the highest air pollution levels of any national park west of the Mississippi and has been rated one the smoggiest park in the nation. See Code Red: America's Five Most Polluted National Parks, June 2004.

On some days, ozone levels in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are higher than in Los Angeles.

A vast majority of the trees in a study by the Forest Service in Sierra and Sequoia National Forests show smog damage. See technical report on Forest Health Monitoring, West Coast Region, USDA/Forest Service (2000).

Read an articles about park pollution in the Fresno Bee: Smog moves out of the city ... and often finds its way into the national parks (7/17/06) and Sequoia-Kings Canyon is victim of second-hand smog from Valley (7/18/06).

Local Air District: The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District

Local air districts develop plans for attaining the federal ozone and particulate matter air quality standards, and they implement the control measures contained within those plans in their areas. These controls primarily affect stationary sources such as factories and power plants. Local air districts also conduct public education and outreach efforts. For more info, visit www.valleyair.org

Is the Air District doing its job?
Currently, the region has no plan in place to control ozone. The Valley's most recent Extreme Ozone attainment plan was rendered obsolete when the EPA revoked the 1-hour ozone standard in June of 2005. The Air District must submit an 8-hour Ozone attainment plan by June of 2007. The Air District submitted and EPA approved a PM-10 Plan in 2004. The Plan pushes back the attainment deadline for PM-10 to 2010.

Transportation Planning Agencies (TPAs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs)

TPAs and MPOs are city, county, or regional planning agencies charged with planning and allocating funding for local and regional transportation infrastructure. The San Joaquin Valley has eight individual county-based TPAs. Each TPA is responsible for writing Regional Transportation Plans, which serve as blueprints for the development of mass transit, highway, airport, railroad, bicycle and pedestrian facilities. TPAs are also charged with developing ãtransportation control measuresä to improve air quality and ensuring that transportation plans comply with Clean Air Act standards.

Are the TPAs doing their job?
Because transportation planning is dispersed among eight individual agencies, there is little regional coordination for regional or universal air quality-friendly transportation planning. The TPAs need to work together to offer the region transit options that are fast, clean, and accessible, so people can leave their cars at home. Studies have shown that widening freeways only facilitates sprawl and exacerbates congestion. Transportation agencies must do more to plan for infill and mixed-use development that provides housing options closer to work, schools, and recreation.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB)

State government, through CARB, sets more stringent state air quality standards, oversees local actions, and implements air pollution control measures for motor vehicle emissions, fuels, and smog checks, as well as consumer products, such as some paints and coatings. CARB is also charged with ensuring that the transport of pollutants from one air district to another is mitigated through the local agencies' plans. For more info, visit www.arb.ca.gov.

Is CARB doing its job?
Traditionally, CARB rarely intervenes in local air districts' pollution control planning processes. Although this agency has the potential to require stricter pollution controls before it signs off on attainment plans and control measures, it rarely does more than simply pass the plans from the local agencies to the federal ones. In order to really make a dent in the air pollution problem that plagues the San Joaquin Valley, CARB must take a more active role in ensuring that local plans to control air pollution are consistent with both federal and state law, and it must refuse to approve plans that fail to meet those standards.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The EPA, as a federal agency, sets national air quality standards, oversees state and local actions, and implements programs for toxic air pollutants, heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, ships, aircraft, off-road diesel equipment, and some types of industrial equipment. EPA also ultimately approves or disapproves all attainment plans and control measures adopted by the local and state agencies. When local and state agencies fail to come up with federally mandated attainment plans and control measures by certain deadlines, the Clean Air Act requires that EPA impose sanctions and/or step in to enforce air pollution regulations, or write the plans that aren't in place. For more info, visit www.epa.gov. In Spanish: www.epa.gov/espanol.

Is EPA doing its job?
Since the formation of the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District in 1991 until early 2002, the EPA failed to take any action on any of the Valley's woefully inadequate plans to control particulate matter. In 2002, under pressure from lawsuits and environmental and community groups, EPA was forced to take a more active role in the San Joaquin Valley. In 2004, the EPA approved the Air District's weak PM-10 Plan, which lacked key elements required by the Clean Air Act. EPA is now proposing new standards for PM that are less stringent than scientists recommend and would exempt agriculture, mining, and other "similar" sources, leaving millions of Valley residents without protection from dangerous levels of dust and soot.