A Quiz For Deep Breathers

Which of the following statements is true:

* Los Angeles’ air pollution gets better year by year, so don’t worry, be happy.

* Air pollution is more dangerous to your health, and your children’s health, than anyone realized even 10 years ago.

My quiz is a setup, of course. Both statements are true. Each year the smog levels drop, leaving the view a bit clearer. And each year scientists discover that the remaining filth in the air erodes our lungs in ways no one predicted when the war on smog began.

Nowhere have these paradoxical trends been so displayed as last week in Diamond Bar. The Air Quality Management District, which relentlessly praises its smog-fighting success, released a new study that should scare every parent in the basin and anyone else who has breathed L.A.’s air for long periods.

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The study, conducted by the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, found that modest increases in particulate pollution--we’re talking here about construction dust, rubber tire grit and the like--produced sharp increases in hospitalizations at Kaiser hospitals.

Keep in mind that particulates once were regarded as so innocuous that little research was conducted into their impact on human health. After all, it was only dust. The heavy-duty research was directed at the more exotic pollutants such as ozone and nitrogen oxides.

Now we know different. A dozen studies over the past decade have established particulates as one of the most dangerous components in the air pollution mix. They work their way deep into the lungs, where they slowly do their damage. And Southern California, natcherly, has the highest particulate levels in the country.

The Kaiser study showed that the biggest jump in hospitalizations came for those who already suffer from chronic lung diseases such as bronchitis or asthma. If the particulate level rose from 40 micrograms per cubic meter to 50 micrograms--a common occurrence here--the number of hospitalizations among this group increased by 7%.

Shankar Prasad, the health effects officer for the AQMD, called the 7% figure “a big number.” And indeed it is, almost twice as large as the increases found in cities back East.

Ronald White of the American Lung Assn. says such figures are sometimes dismissed by those who argue that they apply only to the dying and very sick.

That represents a misconception, he says. “This country has tens of millions of people with chronic lung and cardiovascular disease,” White says. “Many of them go to work every day and lead productive lives. They are not lying in bed on a respirator.”

And how did these people come by their chronic lung disease in the first place? Some of them smoke cigarettes, of course, or have a genetic predisposition. For others, the culprit may be the same air pollution that eventually delivers a knockout blow and puts them in the hospital.

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In fact, one of the scariest studies of recent years involves the autopsies of 107 young accident victims in Southern California. As described in a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the study found that 104 of the young people showed early signs of permanent lung disease. Nearly all had chronic low-level bronchitis. One-third had chronic interstitial pneumonia, a form of the disease found deep within the lung tissue.

Before their deaths, almost none of the young people showed outward signs of breathing disorders. In other words, they didn’t know they were developing chronic lung disease. But they were moving inexorably toward that status of a person who eventually gets picked off by an uptick in particulates.

“The dilemma is that people keep hearing about the air getting cleaner, and it is,” says White. “What they should also hear is that science has learned there’s much more to worry about even with those lower levels.”

As for particulates, the city of Los Angeles could strike a quick blow for cleaner air by committing itself to enforcement of the 6-month-old ban on leaf blowers. In all of Southern California, some 420,000 leaf blowers now work furiously to throw as much dust as possible into the air so we can all breathe it.

That dust contains desiccated pesticides, animal feces, lead, asbestos and god knows what else. And it gets thrown right into people’s faces, especially the faces of the men who must work with the machines strapped to their backs.

The leaf-blower ban won’t solve the particulate problem by any means, but it’s a start. Wouldn’t it be pretty to think that one day we could drop off our kids at school, watch them race across the playground, and not feel that twinge of regret over raising them in the filthiest air in the country?

Ironically, the new science may help us get there. Knowledge is power, after all. If we use it correctly, this knowledge could get us a long way.