California Fights Global Warming

"We are proposing health savings of 28 billion dollars to Californians," said CARB Planner Jeff Lindbergh. "We're trying to arrive at the rules that will make it happen."

Among the many steps they are taking, officials will unveil draft regulations this October, requiring heavy trucks and other diesel vehicles to use exhaust filters for soot control. The state-level action on an international problem, conforms to UN recommendations from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, "Think globally, act locally." Besides mitigating climate change, it also should have a momentous positive impact on people's well-being and, therefore, the economy.

California has been at the forefront of cleaning up smog, ever since that term appeared in an 1893 Los Angeles Times article, fusing the words "smoke" and "fog." Yet, in the effort to improve air quality, San Joaquin Valley have lagged behind Los Angeles and the rest of California.

From the city of Fresno in the north to the city of Bakersfield in the south, the main population centers of the valley are ranked among the "most polluted" in the United States by the American Lung Association.

The San Joaquin Valley is at the heart of California's top agricultural-producing region and is sometimes called "the nation's salad bowl" for the abundance of fruits and vegetables it grows for the US market. It also has been called "the world's richest agricultural valley," according to James. J. Parsons, geography professor emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley.

Hot summer temperatures and a protective mountain ring around the valley make it attractive for growers of everything from cotton to grapes and from citrus to pistachios and dairy cows. Yet those same conditions exacerbate pollution problems. The geography and weather patterns create atmospheric inversions, making the valley "a perfect laboratory dish to trap pollution," said CARB San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District Director Seyed Sadredin to IslamOnline.net. "Because of all that, a small amount does a lot more damage than it would somewhere else."

The valley produces six times less pollution than the adjacent San Francisco Bay Area air district and 10 times less emissions than the nearby South Coast district.

Population, Politics, and Environmental Justice

Bolanos explained to IslamOnline.net that the valley people rank low air quality as their biggest problem. However, many local officials and state politicians (including those on the CARB) are not from the same economic backgrounds as constituents. Therefore, the decision makers' votes sometimes do not reflect such things as farm workers' concerns for pesticide exposure or parking lot attendants' exposure to vehicle exhaust.

Unfortunately, the people most affected by the smog are the ones least able to move away from the smoggy air," due to economic constraints," said Bolanos.

The Fresno Bee daily newspaper mounted a six-year investigative journalism project on the air quality problem, reporting that many middle-income people who could get out of the valley did. Others are stuck because they cannot afford to leave. (Anderson et al)

The CARB's 2008 figures indicate that more than 3,000 premature deaths in the San Joaquin Valley are linked to particulate air pollution every year.

"The Health and Related Economic Benefits of Attaining Healthful Air in the San Joaquin Valley" — a study conducted by Dr. Jane Hall at California State University in Fullerton and published in March 2006 by the Institute for Economic and Environmental Studies at the university — established that purging the valley's fine particles and ozone would decrease asthma attacks by 23,300 and acute cases of bronchitis in children by 3,230 over a year's time.

That is not to mention the issue of boosting productivity. As ozone levels rise by as little as 20 parts per billion, a common day-to-day variation, school absences jump 68 percent, according to Curtis Moore, coeditor of the independent Health and Clean Air newsletter. School and work days are lost to doctors' visits for heart and lung ailments associated with the smog, said Moore.

Green House Gases

"I tell children, 'Don't play outside on a bad air day.' I tell people who want to exercise, 'Go to the mall where there's filtered air'."

Ozone and particulate matter both penetrate to the deepest reaches of the lungs, where only a cell wall stands between them and the rest of the body. Ozone not only aggravates asthma, it actually causes it as well. "Particulate matter," also known as particle pollution or PM, is a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets. Particle pollution is made up of a number of components, including acids (such as nitrates and sulfates), organic chemicals, metals, and soil or dust particles. (US Environmental Protection Agency)

Black carbon and other fine particles cause heart attacks and strokes. In fact, the air pollution they create is one of the eight top risk factors for heart attacks, Moore explained to IslamOnline.net. Other effects of these microscopic invaders include burning or stinging irritation of airways, coughing, difficulty in breathing, permanently decreased lung function, chronic bronchitis, irregular heartbeat, and of course, premature death in people with heart or lung disease, according to CVAQ.

"We know the valley has bad air," said Dorothy Slevkoff, asthma care manager at Kaiser Permanente health complex in Fresno. "I tell children, 'Don't play outside on a bad air day.' I tell people who want to exercise, 'Go to the mall where there's filtered air'."

This restrictive atmosphere may become more relaxed if truckers help out by installing all-new equipment to meet 2010 standards by 2022 as required.

Indeed, history reminds us that high cost of living was the main argument against abolition of slavery in the British Empire of the 19th century. Only later people came to realize that was a false sense of economy. Now in the 21st century, if the government of the world's tenth-largest economy succeeds in enforcing payment for healthier air, other governments that have stood on the sidelines may follow suit as California takes the lead.

Sources:

Anderson, Barbara, Russell Clemings, and Mark Grossi. "Fighting for Air: With Months of Deadly Pollution Each Year, the Valley Faces Decades of Cleanup." Fresno Bee. Accessed 24 Sep. 2008.

"Particulate Matter." US Environmental Protection Agency. May 9, 2008. Accessed 26 Sep. 2008.

Talli Nauman is a freelance photojournalist specializing in environment and development issues in the Americas. She holds a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies and an M.A. in International Journalism. You can contact her by sending an e-mail to ScienceTech@iolteam.com.