Sacramento Gets ‘F’ Again on Air Quality

By Ngoc Nguyen, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

May 1–About half of California’s counties received a failing grade for high levels of smog or particle pollution in an annual air-quality report card released today.

The Sacramento region’s air quality improved from previous years, but still received a failing grade on the American Lung Association’s 2008 State of the Air report card.

Placer and El Dorado counties, which also scored “F’s,” had more polluted days than Sacramento County, public health officials said. Yolo County went from a “B” to a “C” this year.

Sacramento ranked 6th nationally among the nation’s most ozone-polluted cities and 8th among urban areas on short-term (24-hour spikes) exposure to particle pollution — worse than New York City, Detroit and Chicago.

The city’s ozone and short-term particle pollution levels worsened from those on last year’s report card.

The grades reflect air quality data verified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency from 2004 to 2006.

“Too many people are breathing dirty air in Sacramento,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, policy director of the American Lung Association of California.

At a Wednesday press conference, Holmes-Gen pointed to heavy trucks and cars crossing Tower Bridge and zooming along nearby Interstate 5. Ninety percent of pollution comes from vehicle traffic, she said.

Ozone, or smog, is a gas formed when sunlight reacts with vapors emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. Particle pollution includes soot, ash and diesel exhaust, spewed into the air from the burning of fossil fuels and wood.

Larry Greene of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District said the county’s air quality has improved, but the gains are offset by a growing population and increased vehicle traffic.

Regional air quality managers curbed the burning of wood on days with high air pollution last winter. During the winter, wood burning in fireplaces and stoves accounts for 49 percent of soot and other particle pollution in Sacramento County.

Regional sources of pollution, such as wood or agricultural burning, account of spikes in 24-hour particle pollution, or “hotspots of pollution, said Holmes-Gen.

Efforts to improve air quality need to take into account the day-to-day sources of pollution, such as truck and bus diesel exhaust, along with seasonal source of pollution.

Twenty-four-hour spikes in particle pollution cause acute health effects, such as health attack, stroke, and asthma attacks, and an increase in emergency room visits.

Long-term pollution causes abnormal lung develop in children. Both cause lung damage, Holmes-Gen said.

She said cleaner vehicles and fuels and reduced vehicle traffic — through smarter land-use policies — are needed to clean up the air.

The 2008 State of the Air report is available to read at www.stateoftheair.org.

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