Worst winter air pollution since '80s? No way
Is this the worst air-quality winter since the 1980s? I've heard some activists say that, but I don't agree with it.
Don't get me wrong, the San Joaquin Valley's air has been under a soot siege since early December. For more than seven weeks, there were daily PM-2.5 violations.
But I looked back randomly in the California Air Resources Board data at the 2002-2003 winter. And I counted more violations.
Those were truly rotten times for the breathing public. There were no prohibitions for burning wood in fireplaces on bad days.
From October to Jan. 31, I counted 87 violations -- and by the end of March, there were 111.
This year, there have been 68 violations so far. February and March are not usually as bad as the other months, so I'm thinking there won't be more than 111 violations this season.
Now back to reality.
It's nearly a decade later, and this improvement is no where near being dramatic. According to some asthmatics I know, it's not helping at all.
Comments:
I heard some say it was the worst December ever recorded. They may have been misquoted. In any case, the air district took all the credit for the cleanest winter on record last year when storm after storm cleared the air repeatedly. This year they are blaming the weather for a horrible season. They can't have it both ways.
Posted by: airqualityguy at January 31, 2012 1:32 PM
No one can plausibly claim the mandatory burning curtailments haven’t improved air quality. That the burn bans haven’t done so enough is because they haven’t been enforced enough.
In my own neighborhood, five former wood-burners — all reported as violators of no-burn day restrictions — have switched out their old wood-stoves for cleaner natural-gas burning units for which I must partly credit our Air District’s enforcement of Rule 4901.
This is of lasting benefit to me and my neighbors, even on days when burning is allowed.
I related my tactic, the one I so frequently urge here of reporting violators to our Air District, to an acquaintance and he reported that he is quite impressed by the dramatic improvement he has managed to effect on the air quality for his early morning runs. He says he’s eliminated burning within a quarter mile of his home and he is now casting an eye on making improvements in his father’s neighborhood.
I have attempted a similar sphere of influence in my own environs. It is astonishing how much one can do for one’s own health just on a morning run.
Posted by: 8TM at January 31, 2012 3:01 PM
There does not seem to be any record of valley PM 2.5 values before 1999. But, this link shows one way of looking at how bad this winter seems to be.
Click Here for HTMLGoodies">Worst Winter on Record
Posted by: airqualityguy at January 31, 2012 7:46 PM
There's no record of PM-2.5 values before 1999 because the standard was not approved until 1997.
Posted by: Mark Grossi at January 31, 2012 7:55 PM
Mark, from an earlier post you wrote: "The microscopic chemicals, soot and other particles kill 9,200 people prematurely in California each year, and more than 10% of those are in the Valley."
Would you know if the number of premature deaths related to such "microscopic chemicals, soot and other particles" in the Valley has been rising, has remained flat or has been falling over the past decade? This would no doubt be an additional measure to assess whether this type of air pollution is growing worse, getting better or staying about the same.
Posted by: Alan Kandel at January 31, 2012 8:09 PM
AQGuy, I couldn’t make your link. Is it the same data as on your site?
For me, one’s total intake of PM2.5 is of greater import than number of days in exceedance.
The average hourly PM2.5 level for Dec 1999 (Fresno): 82mcg/m3.
The average hourly PM2.5 level for Dec 2011 (Fresno): 53mcg/m3.
I couldn’t get ARB query site to spit out monthly average data, so you’ll have to trust my fingers or brain didn’t slip in calculating these from the daily averages. My own view is that the burn bans are not ineffective and some day they may actually be complied with or enforced.
The one thing we can all agree on is that this is still wretched, and we need to do more to get to a yearly average of 12.5mcg/m3 by whatever means.
Posted by: 8TM at January 31, 2012 9:55 PM
Let me try that link again:
Worst Winter on Record
Posted by: airqualityguy at February 1, 2012 7:40 AM
Thanks for all the comments. Alan, I do not know if there are follow studies on the PM-2.5 early mortality. I believe there are. After ozone was determined to be a health problem decades ago, there were a lot of health studies, and they continue today. We know far more about ozone than we do about PM-2.5. I remember writing a story in the mid-1990s about PM-2.5. I wrote the story like PM-2.5 was some kind of sinister new threat to our health. I felt like I maybe hyped it a little too much. Turned out, I undersold the danger.
Posted by: Mark Grossi at February 1, 2012 9:04 AM
To play our Air District’s shameless game of cheery-picking, here are some more averages. This should settle nothing once and for all
The average PM2.5 level for Dec 1999 (Fresno): 82.0 µg/m3
The average PM2.5 level for Dec 2002 (Fresno): 41.4 µg/m3
The average PM2.5 level for Dec 2009 (Fresno): 36.3 µg/m3
The average PM2.5 level for Dec 2010 (Fresno): 28.0 µg/m3
The average PM2.5 level for Dec 2011 (Fresno): 53.0 µg/m3
Fresno County PM 2.5 average Nov & Dec 2002 & Jan 2003: 47.4 µg/m3
Fresno County PM 2.5 average Nov & Dec 2011 & Jan 2012: 40.1 µg/m3
What these numbers reflect, as I see it, is just another means of showing just how much wind we happened to have had in a given month or period, more so than any thing we are doing for ourselves. Even “only moderately polluted” Dec 2010 is a shameful failure.
I calculated these averages from ARB’s Year-at-a -Glance data
http://1.usa.gov/x1VycX
The desire to demonstrate that one little period of time in hell wasn’t quite so hot as another is infectious.
Posted by: 8TM at February 2, 2012 2:14 PM
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