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In fact California's smog has reduced considerably over the years: Daniel Weintraub: Clearing air on California's success in pollution fight By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist Published 12:01 am PDT Sunday, August 6, 2006 Story appeared in Forum section, Page E1 One of the biggest successes of government regulation over the past generation has been the project to clean California's air. But most of the state's residents have no idea how things have changed, or why. In a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, half the adults surveyed said they believed the air quality in their region was worse today than it was 10 years ago, and another 13 percent said it was the same. Only 21 percent said it was better. But by almost any measure, the air is cleaner today in just about every corner of California than it was a decade ago. And the progress over the longer term has been even more dramatic. The change is all the more impressive because it has come amid the state's relentless growth. California's population of 37 million has nearly doubled since 1970, when the effort to clear the air began in earnest. Over the past 10 years, we've added 5 million people. But still the air gets cleaner. Twenty years ago, smog alerts were fairly common, especially in the Los Angeles region. In a first-stage alert, school districts were warned to use caution when allowing children to play outside. In a second-stage alert, businesses that produced a lot of ozone, a major ingredient in smog, were told to cut back their operations or switch to cleaner burning fuels. Now those warnings are relatively rare. The transformation began in the mid-1970s, with the federal Clean Air Act and the phasing out of leaded gasoline. The lead in fuel caused many problems, but one was crucial: It prevented the use of catalytic converters to clean the exhaust, because the lead poisoned the devices. Catalytic converters are filters that reduce an engine's emission of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide, which come from burning fuel and are the major ingredients of smog. The introduction and development of the catalytic converter and the invention of cleaner burning fuels greatly reduced the amount of pollution produced by cars and trucks. The other big change, especially in the past 10 years, has been the reduction in pollution from diesel engines. Before 1993, the average sulfur content of diesel fuel was around 3,000 parts per million, according to the California Air Resources Board. Cleaner-burning fuel introduced in the early 1990s reduced that to 500 parts per million. Soon, it will be 15 parts per million. Regulators have also cracked down on other sources of pollution, from boats and lawn mowers to fireplaces, gas cans and household cleaners. Some critics certainly saw this as overkill. But it is hard to argue with the results. California's air basins today violate state and federal clean air standards far less than they used to. In the Sacramento Valley, between 1980 and 1985, the region exceeded the national one-hour standard for ozone an average of 19 times a year. Between 1990 and 1995, the average number of days exceeding that standard was 12. And from 2000 to 2005, the average dropped to just four days in excess of the one-hour national standard. In Los Angeles, which was once famous for its dirty air, the average number of days exceeding the national standard dropped from around 160 in 1985 to 120 in 1995 to about 30 in 2005. "Air quality is much better than it was 10 years ago," says Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the state air board. "A lot of people probably don't remember those old days. Twenty years ago, people saw giant leaps in improvement, saw it very rapidly. But you don't see the big reductions now because we don't get large reductions any more. We get small, incremental reductions. All the big things have been done." The new focus is on particulate matter, the tiny specs of pollutants that come from dust, dirt, soot, smoke and moisture produced by factories, power plants, cars, trucks and construction activity. This is still a big problem, but most of the state has seen slow but steady progress on that front as well. Why don't more people know this? One reason might be migration. As people move from coastal areas to the inland valleys, where smog is worse by comparison, they think pollution has been getting worse in their new neighborhood, even if it's not. Another is the nature of our politics. Democrats tend to downplay the progress because they are pushing for more regulation to make the air even cleaner. Republicans are generally suspicious of regulation and don't want to celebrate one of its success stories. So there is a conspiracy of silence. And widespread ignorance. ============================================================================== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
