Unrelenting Air Pollution in California's San Joaquin Valley This Winter

The Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment recently reported that California’s San Joaquin Valley is experiencing the worst air quality in decades.   Despite the many reports of exceptionally bad air quality in the Valley this winter, the response has been a muted ho-hum: What’s new? What are we going to do about it?

This is serious.  Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator, acknowledged the gravity of the situation as he swung through the Valley last week announcing a Valley Plan and new funding:  "Four times more people die in the San Joaquin Valley from air pollution than they do from traffic fatalities."  Additional funding for some new air pollution controls is nice, but is there a real commitment?  And what is the local San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District doing about it?  Not a lot.  Kevin Hall, director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition explains:

“During this prolonged red-air season, not a single Air Alert was (or will be) issued by the Valley Air Board. Children ran and played through recesses. Evening football games were played. Seniors took morning walks. Joggers went on their runs. Little did they know the damage being done to their lungs,their hearts,their futures—and the immune systems of their future descendants. Not once did the regional agency formed to address this public health crisis issue a word of warning.”

The air district blames the high air pollution situation on weather.  However, the stagnant air that is making things so unhealthy is trapping extremely high levels of pollution – levels that don’t seem to be coming down the way you would expect them to over the years.  For all the work towards clean air in the San Joaquin Valley, fine particulate pollution has gone down just ten percent over the past decade (see 2000 and 2010 emissions here).

The ho-hum attitude of the air district has created an emergency unfolding in slow motion.  Not only is the air pollution increasing asthma and other respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and a long list of other ill effects, it may be altering the brains of a whole generation subjected to the constant onslaught of fine particle pollution.  A recent study reported Alzheimer’s like changes to the brains of children living in areas with very high air pollution. This adds to a growing body of evidence that air pollution is inhibiting normal brain development, leading to lower IQs and possibly contributing to autism.  The Wall Street Journal ran a good article summarizing these impacts last Fall.

The biggest sources of fine particulate pollution in the San Joaquin Valley are farming operations, “managed” burning, residential burning (a.k.a fireplaces), and diesel trucks.  Dr. Alex Sherriffs , newly appointed to the California Air Resources Board, recently wrote a letter to the editor urging people to stop burning wood in their fireplaces:  “Our Valley has had a string of unhealthy air days, and I see it in the asthma visits to my office and patients with lung disease struggling to breathe. “   Curbing fireplace use is a good start, but the Valley needs more decisive action.  As the air district continues approving new permits for coal burning, and relying on feeble, mainly voluntary and incentive-based air quality programs, they are essentially looking the other way as another generation of children grows up wheezing and developmentally encumbered.  It is passed time for them to get serious about meeting air quality standards in the Valley and fulfilling their mission to safeguard the public’s health.   

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