200 Experts to Pick Apart Southland Air in Smog Study

More than 200 scientists and technicians will descend on Southern California next month to launch the final phase of the nation’s most comprehensive air pollution studies in more than a decade.

From San Nicolas Island to Riverside, the South Coast Air Basin--which has the most intractable air pollution problem in the country--will become a real-world open-air laboratory where scientists hope to unravel air pollution phenomena that are still not fully understood.

State-of-the-art instruments, including laser and infrared analyzers, will be used in the study. Air samples will be taken from airplanes and balloons. Indeed, one team of scientists is scheduled to set up shop at the Grand Canyon to track the inland flow of pollutants by searching out inert tracer gases released by colleagues along the Southern California coast.

Known as the Southern California Air Quality Study, the $8.5-million research project’s findings are expected to have a major effect on air pollution control strategies into the next century. They may eventually affect where residents in the four-county air basin live and work, and how they get there.

Building Programs

A better understanding, for example, of the chemistry of air pollutants and their transport downwind across the basin may give officials the evidence needed to prod cities and counties into taking air pollution effects into account when deciding whether to approve new residential, business and industrial developments.

A clearer perception of how gaseous emissions are transformed into tiny airborne particles that produce atmospheric haze and affect the human respiratory system could hasten new or more effective controls on them.

“This is a landmark undertaking for us. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever attempted, and it’s going to be of value not only to us but for the entire country,” John Holmes of the state Air Resources Board said in an interview.

James Lents, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, predicted: “I think clearly it’s going to be the basis for regulatory decisions . . . through the end of this century.”

The 10-week study will take place in two parts, one to undertake experiments during typical summer weather conditions and the other during typical winter conditions. The summer phase will begin June 15 and continue until July 24. The second half will run from Nov. 15 to Dec. 15. The two earlier phases, in 1985 and 1986, laid the groundwork for the final one.

Those Involved

Participants in the study, led by the state Air Resources Board, include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the South Coast Air Quality Management District; Ford Motor Co.; General Motors Research Laboratories; Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn.; Southern California Edison, and the Western Oil and Gas Assn.--as well as researchers from university research programs such as UC Riverside’s Air Pollution Research Center.

A number of participating scientists are from Europe and Canada and the findings are expected to be of interest overseas as well.

The participants will be involved in one or more research projects, approved in advance by a scientific screening committee. The information collected from the various experiments will be pooled to develop the most comprehensive data base yet known for gauging air pollution problems and developing possible solutions.

What makes the South Coast Air Basin so attractive to scientists is its unique combination of weather, wind patterns, geography and pollutants.

“The photochemistry that makes smog is not unique to Los Angeles, but the rate that it occurs is different. Everything that happens other places in days happens in hours in Los Angeles. It’s almost a natural research laboratory,” Bill Sessa of the ARB said.

It has been 14 years since the last comprehensive study. Known as the Aerosol Characterization Experiment, the 1973 study formed the scientific underpinnings of existing air pollution controls.

Since those studies were completed, however, the air pollution picture in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties has changed and technology has advanced.

Past controls on cars and factories have changed the ratio of pollutants in the atmosphere, thus making existing air pollution computer models outdated or inadequate.

Several years ago, for example, a decision was made--based on a widely used computer model--to concentrate regulatory efforts on emissions of hydrocarbons instead of oxides of nitrogen in trying to control ozone, commonly known as photochemical smog. Ozone is a toxic pollutant at ground level but at high altitudes protects Earth from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.

Contradictory Evidence

Only years later was it discovered that the computer model may have been wrong after a state Air Resources Board study based on actual observations showed that ozone levels went down fastest when there were controls on both hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen.

In addition, policy-makers are finding that as they consider costly new controls they sometimes lack persuasive scientific evidence that the new regulations would achieve the greatest reduction in air pollution at the least cost.

One of the new study’s major benefits is expected to be more sophisticated computer models that can predict with far greater accuracy whether a proposed air pollution control will actually result in cleaner air at the most reasonable cost.

The growing cost of air pollution controls is one of the principal reasons that major corporations, including auto makers, utilities and oil producers, are participating in the study.

“When you are talking about proposed rules that could cost industry millions of dollars at a time, you want to have some assurance of what effect you are going to have when you go down the road,” Holmes said.

Expensive Next Step

Carol Ellis, supervisor of air quality studies for Southern California Edison, added: “A lot of people are coming to the realization that the next steps in control measures are going to be very expensive to get that last increment of emissions out. I think they are coming to realize that just reducing emissions is not the answer to better air quality. To get better air quality, you’ve got to know what kind of emissions to reduce, and what time to reduce them.”

Such findings are particularly important because there is a growing sense that technological fixes to the air pollution problem will not be enough to clean the air. The South Coast Air Basin is not expected to meet the December, 1987, federal Clean Air Act ozone standard until at least the year 2020, if ever.

Increasingly, it is thought that there needs to be limits on indirect causes of air pollution, such as controls on the locations of new homes and businesses which have an effect on the number of miles that smog-producing vehicles are on the road.

“Up to now, we’ve had a real technological approach to solving air quality. Everybody pointed fingers at the Air Resources Board or the South Coast Air Quality Management District and said they are going to fix air quality pollution by passing more rules and having new technology,” Sessa observed.

Government Actions

“But over the last 25 years the program has evolved to the point where there are fewer and fewer potential solutions through technology and more potential solutions through land-use decisions that local government agencies make,” Sessa said.

In addition to ferreting out new information about ozone, the study will examine pollutants, including some air toxics, that have not been studied before in such a manner.

Ozone, carbon compounds, particulates, acid fog and acid rain, and nitrogen oxides are all scheduled to be studied.

Few believe that the study will resolve the controversies about how best to control air pollution. But it is hoped that the study will provide valuable new data to form an agreed-upon basis to begin new policy initiatives.