2002 Spike in Air Pollution Reverses Downward Trend

California has endured its worst air pollution season in several years, as inland valleys have been smothered in a pall of haze and ozone has spread to far-flung regions unaccustomed to smog.

The increase in pollution is a sharp reversal after years of improvements in air quality statewide and has renewed debate over whether California is on the right track in the fight for clean air.

Smog levels were up from Santa Clarita to Sacramento, driven by hot, dry, stagnant weather that prevailed statewide much of the summer and by forest fires that polluted the air over formerly smog-free places such as Death Valley National Park and the eastern Sierra Nevada.

In sharp contrast, coast-hugging urban communities from San Francisco to San Diego largely escaped the siege. Ozone pollution is rapidly becoming a thing of the past along the coastal plains as an east-west divide splits the state into zones of clean and polluted air.

Much of the city of Los Angeles and the southern part of Los Angeles County have been in that smog-free zone for several years. Smog-monitoring stations in downtown Los Angeles, Lynwood and West Los Angeles all recorded zero days so far this year in which ozone readings exceeded federal standards. Burbank has had one bad-air day. Reseda has had nine, according to data collected by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

But the AQMD’s jurisdiction -- all of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- overall experienced 49 days when ozone in at least one part of the basin exceeded federal health-based standards, 36% more than last year. Air quality officials treat the entire area as a single entity because emissions generated in one place help cause smog downwind.

Readings that exceed the federal standards mean there was enough ozone in the air to cause headaches, nausea or shortness of breath for at least some people an average of one day in three during smog season so far.

Air is considered unhealthful if it contains more than 120 parts per billion of ozone in one hour. The smog season officially ends Oct. 31, but air quality officials do not expect the figures to change greatly in the final weeks of the month.

The worst air pollution in Southern California has been in the Santa Clarita Valley, which has suffered 32 days of unhealthful ozone. Other Southland smog hotspots this year have included Crestline and Redlands (23 each); Banning (14); Rubidoux and Glendora (12 each).

Joe Cassmassi, senior meteorologist for the AQMD, said southerly ocean breezes carried emissions north to Santa Clarita. Also, wildfires in early summer kicked up massive amounts of nitrate -- not from smoke, but from air pollution fallout that had accumulated on chaparral for years -- adding to local smog. The AQMD also moved an air pollution tracking station in Santa Clarita, which may account for some of the extra violations, he said.

“Smog has been very noticeable this year. It makes our life more difficult,” said Rick Winsman, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Air quality officials caution against making too much of one year’s smog levels. They emphasize how much smog depends on fickle weather conditions, and they instead rely on long-term trends to gauge progress. Measured by that yardstick, the progress toward clean air is indisputable.

A decade ago, weather conditions similar to those that occurred this summer would have produced nearly 150 unhealthful days, as well as a few dozen days of “very unhealthful” skies, when “air was so poor a healthy person would feel the effects just walking out the door,” said an AQMD spokesman, Sam Atwood.

Days of bad ozone are down about 65% since 1992, the peak concentrations are much less severe, ozone is not massed over the urban core as it once was, and dreaded “first stage alerts,” when air quality was very unhealthful for everybody, disappeared four years ago.

“Eighty percent of [California’s] population lives within 10 miles of the coast. You have a great deal of the population in the South Coast area experiencing much cleaner air,” said Jack Broadbent, administrator of air programs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s West Coast office.

Thanks to stringent regulations and innovative solutions by industry, Californians now drive the cleanest cars powered by the cleanest fuels in use anywhere in the world. They use some of the cleanest consumer products and work in jobs using some of the cleanest technology in the nation. More reductions are on the way too, as new regulations require super-clean cars and smoke-free buses and trucks.

“I don’t think we’re losing our way. We are on target, but you’re going to see year-to-year fluctuations,” said AQMD’s chief, Barry Wallerstein.

Others say that, after years of impressive gains, California may be slipping.

“I think California is backsliding on air quality,” said V. John White, a Sierra Club lobbyist and air quality consultant in Sacramento. “We’re always at risk of growth eating up our gains. Today, we’re living off the extraordinary gains in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and we don’t have much intensity and focus. There’s a complacency -- too many victory laps. But the self-congratulatory phase is over, and we need to get back to work.”

“We are concerned about it,” said Rich Varenchik, spokesman for the state Air Resources Board. In the Los Angeles region, “progress

“Weather is obviously the main factor that has contributed to this little bump up,” Varenchik said. But, he added, the Los Angeles area “still has this classic problem of more people, more growth, more miles driven. Maybe this year was just a hiccup, but it will take a couple more years to really see.”

One peculiar trend scientists note is how smog is occurring farther and farther inland in California each year. The worst smog in the Sacramento area occurred far downwind in Placer County, while in the Los Angeles region, the ozone hotspot has steadily shifted eastward from Pasadena to Glendora and on to Crestline over the last 20 years.

Janet Arey, an atmospheric chemist at UC Riverside’s Air Pollution Research Center, said rapid growth in inland regions means more home-grown emissions from businesses, consumer products and traffic. Also, reformulated paints, gasoline and solvents have less reactive chemicals, which slows ozone formation and causes it to reach peak levels farther downwind, she said.

Elsewhere in the state, the pattern of bad air in inland regions has persisted. In the San Joaquin Valley, 33 days of unhealthful ozone were reported -- up 38% from the previous year. Parlier, a small town southeast of Fresno, had the most smoggy days and one of the highest readings in the state, almost 40% over the federal limit.

In the Sacramento area, air violated the federal ozone standard on 10 days -- more than three times as many violations as last year, officials report.

“High heat, calm winds, temperatures over 100 degrees for days on end: That is the perfect recipe for smog stew, and that’s what we had this year,” said Kerry Shearer, spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Across the nation, more air pollution was measured in major cities over the last two years, as a result, largely, of record heat. Preliminary data show that there were 23% more days of high ozone in 2002 than in 2001, according to a report the U.S. Public Interest Research Group released in August.

The only winner in the California smog siege is Houston, which at one point supplanted the Los Angeles region for the nation’s smog crown, but this year is on pace for a record-setting clean-air year, with 23 unhealthful days.

“The weather patterns that bring wind and rain to Houston bring stagnant weather to L.A. They flip-flop with each other a lot of the time,” said Brian Lambeth, senior meteorologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.