Commentary : Putting the Pollution Blame Where It Belongs--Behind Your Wheel

The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s 1987 list of the Top 20 air polluters in the Los Angeles basin has some impressive names on it. Names like General Motors, Texaco, Chevron and Douglas Aircraft. Even Universal Studios made the list, but my name isn’t there and neither is yours.

To be fair, you and I should be right at the top of the AQMD’s Top 20. You and I drive our cars and trucks around the South Coast Air Basin almost every day, and together we contribute so much pollution to the air that the biggest industrial giants can’t begin to compete with us.

When it comes to carbon monoxide, for example, the Top 20 polluters combined can’t hold a candle to you and me. The Top 20 sources of carbon monoxide, including Chevron and Universal Studios, pumped more than 13,000 tons of carbon monoxide into our air.

That’s pretty impressive until you realize that all industrial, commercial and other stationary sources combined constitute only 3% of the total. Our cars and trucks generated a staggering 97% of the carbon monoxide in our air.

The big guys on the Top 20 list for nitrogen oxides include Texaco, Mobil, Shell and Unocal, but they aren’t in the same class with us. The Top 20 put about 37,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air, but we drove enough to contribute a lot more than that. The total from the Top 20 combined with other stationary sources made up about 29% of the nitrogen oxides in our air. You and I in our cars and trucks provided the 71%.

The same pattern holds true on the list of the Top 20 sources of reactive hydrocarbons. Giants such as General Motors, Atlantic Richfield, Shell, Southern California Gas Co. and other stationary sources produced only about half of all the reactive hydrocarbons in the air. We produced the other half with our vehicles.

While the AQMD has long regulated industrial sources of pollution, it is turning its attention to other big polluters--you and me.

Why? The South Coast Air Basin--Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties and the urban portion of San Bernardino County--has the worst air in the nation.

Ozone, our most serious and most difficult-to-control pollutant, causes short-term lung irritation, and recent studies indicate that it may cause long-term loss of lung function in children.

The South Coast Basin exceeded the federal health standard for ozone 148 days in 1986. The closest competitors in the national bad-ozone championship outside California were Houston and New York City, exceeding the standard 20 days per year.

Ozone is formed when reactive hydrocarbons combine with nitrogen oxides in our sun-baked air. That’s why the AQMD keeps tabs on big emitters of hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and others. Our basin is the only area in the nation, for example, that exceeds the federal health standard for nitrogen dioxide. And it ranks among the leaders in carbon monoxide, along with Denver and Phoenix.

In one sense, the big industrial air polluters get a break when it comes to paying for the worst air quality in the nation. They end up paying hefty fees for polluting the air. You and I pay much more, and a lot longer, because you and I breathe the air we pollute.

Carbon monoxide is lethal. Even in small amounts, it attacks our respiratory systems and impairs our ability to provide our bodies with enough oxygen. In large enough doses, the stuff kills us.

Smog ruins our viewing pleasure, of course, hiding our beautiful area behind a brown-yellow haze. It also drives up our medical costs, because it attacks our respiratory and circulatory systems; it drives up the cost of eating because it does millions of dollars of damage each year to crops; it makes driving more expensive because it ruins the vehicle’s mechanical parts, and our everyday living costs rise with the damage done to the paint on houses and indoor furnishings.

So you and I pay a price far larger than the pollution fees the Top 20 corporations pay. Some estimates place the national annual costs of air pollution-related health problems at a billion dollars. That price doesn’t include suffering, loss of loved ones or the mortgaged future we’re leaving our children.

Today, there are about 8 million cars and trucks in our region. Over the next couple of decades, that number could double as our population grows. We don’t have a choice--you and I have to get off the Top 20 list right now.

We have to drive less, using car pools and mass transit at every opportunity. When we do drive, we have to do it in vehicles so thoroughly maintained that they run at absolute efficiency, polluting as little as possible. We have to shift away from pure gasoline power too, making much wider use of alternative fuels such as methanol and finding an effective way to drive with electricity.

These strategies will undoubtedly impinge on our life style, but clearly the benefits are worth whatever minor inconveniences we may encounter. We must continue to push technology further and further to develop alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels as our principal means of transportation.