A menacing air in California's Central Valley

[Newsjock]

http://www.trbimg.com/img-52e30f06/turbine/la-la-me-fresno-air01-jpg-20140124/600
Source: Los Angeles Times

On bad-air days here in the Central Valley, school officials hoist red flags to warn parents and pupils that being outside is officially deemed “unhealthful for all groups.”

This winter, though, the most polluted on record, schools have not only raised red flags. On several days, they have had to send out notices saying the red flags should really be purple—indicating “very unhealthful” air — if only they had them. But such warnings have been be so rare that schools don't even have the flags designating the most extreme conditions.

... From Stockton to Bakersfield, a haze of chemical-laced particles has tinted the air a rusty gray all winter. In the evenings there's a charcoal stripe across the horizon. The Sierra Nevada hasn't been visible for more than a month.

... Now the amount of fine particles — known as PM-2.5 — in the air is so high that a new group is affected: outdoorsy adults with no health problems. On many days, the air district, tracking hourly readings, sends out an alert: "Real Time Activity Risk Warning."

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-central-valley-air-20140125,0,5254513,full.story

[Stuart G]

1. Well..here is a problem that we all have to deal with

Everyone.......k and r

[Cleita]

2. Yet the Central Valley voters will still vote for the likes of Kevin

McCarthy, who doesn't care about the quality of air and the soil in his district. He prefers to hang around with the cabal in DC who are trying to bring down Obama and clog up any decent legislation in the House.

[NYC_SKP]

7. I spent some time on a tour in his office last summer... His district is petroleum.

He's got a god-awful giant portrait of Reagan on one wall and a decent Abe Lincoln behind his desk.

His position in congress rates him a full suite of offices and aides, it's kind of vulgar.

You are correct, all he does all day long is work to prevent any sort of reform, including environmentally friendly ones.

[Cleita]

8. He has a guaranteed seat. Our local Dems won't run anyone against him

because they say it's not winnable. Maybe but we should give him some opposition. He just sits on the ballot alone and doesn't even have to work at getting reelected. I'm disgusted with this and the fact he has gained so much power in the corrupt politics of DC.

I wonder how many Republican held seats in the house are just like this and why isn't our party doing something to dethrone them?

[RobertEarl]

3. Too bad we don't have weather modification

This would be a good time to use it.

One thing that is different that I have noticed is that offshore from California is a huge area of hotter than normal water. An anomaly of about 4 degrees warmer water than over the last 30 years of record keeping. You can see a picture of it here, which is a world map of SST- Sea Surface Temperature anomalies. While there notice how much warmer the water is above England.

In short two big time anomalies in temperatures which drive weather systems.

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur

[Cleita]

4. The Central Valley ills are caused by bad environmental practices of

Big agriculture. Fix that and it will fix the pollution problems both in the ground and in the air.

[reddread]

5. you are so wrong about issues in the valley

its not even worth rebutting your narrow minded ignorance.
have a nice day.

[Cleita]

6. I had to research it for a candidate who tried to run

against Kevin McCarthy back before the Democratic Party decided to just let him be the only candidate on the ballot basically turning him into a king. I learned all about the high rate of asthma from the pig farming, pesticides and chemicals used in the fields and so much more.

You have a nice day too.

Btw is not just about Fresno, but Bakersfield and other places. Get over yourselves!

[KoKo]

9. Isn't Bakersfield the Carrot producing area...Salad Greens, also?

As an East Coaster I feel we will be devastated because of this drought in our food supply.

The big Restaurants and Fast Food Places will get the little that's left with the emergency irrigation...but so much of the whole country depends on CA Produce and Grapes for Wine...it's got to be devastating.

I had no idea, though, that the pollution had gotten that bad from the crops. Is it the pesticides along with the drought that's going on?

Stay Safe. We have our own problems here on the East Coast the past years....so we are all in this together...one way or the other with our agricultural sectors and even our poultry and hog mega farms. Gotta hope this terrible past couple of years is a "one off cyclical"...but, I believe in Global Climate change...so this might just be the beginning of what's to come.

[Cleita]

10. Lots of crops but also pig and poultry farming done

on a factory level. Disgusting, really. Mostly Monsanto type chemicals and seeds are used by the big corporate farms. And as another poster noted petroleum, but we have that here on the coast too.

[shebornik]

20. Don't forget all the milk and methane producing dairies

that moved up here when they were kicked out of the L A area.

[Cleita]

21. Yep, I didn't forget. I just didn't include,. Thanks for adding. n/t

[deurbano]

24. I grew up in Bakersfield, and was briefly a flagger for a crop duster!

God knows what we were exposed to... but my exposure was brief, unlike so many others.

[Le Taz Hot]

32. That poster is wrong

about the Valley . . . she always has been. She hates the area and she hates all the people in it. She's been disparaging about this area ever since I've been on this board and never misses an opportunity to shit on anything Central Valley. She's incensed that we go to "her" coastal city and, well, are TOURISTS!111!11

The major pollutant here is from cars/trucks going up and down I-5 and Hwy 99 24/7. We live in a bowl and with no winds and no rain, there's nowhere for it to go. Additionally, coast breezes blow east which means we get the Bay Area's pollution and some of Sacramento's. In other words, the vast majority of pollutants in the Valley are not caused by the residents.

But you are right about one thing, produce prices will be going WAY up this summer. If you're able to grow a garden you might want to think about doing so.

[truedelphi]

11. Could you spell out where you think that Cleita is wrong?

Having to drive from Lake County, a place that boasts that it possesses the top cleanest air in the country (a boast shared with three other counties, one in Colorado and one in Ohio) out to Sacramento at least three time each summer, I am always appalled at how awful the air smells.

It stinks like there are industrial office parks along the way. I detect PCP, benzene, adhesives etc in the air. But all that is out there is the ubiquitous plantations of over-pesticided foliage. Eventually those items being grown will end up in a super market near me.

In the winter, people's fireplaces churn out other toxics, so that haze is in part due to how much firewood people are burning. Add that to the mix, and it is no wonder people are getting these health advisories.

[reddread]

33. think?

Now that Ive had some sleep, out here in Kentucky where the skies are blue and the town smells like a burnt match in the #2 state for cigarette smoking and the #1 state for lung cancer with no smog laws for vehicles, Id be happy to set you both straight.
LeTaz already gave you the lay of the land down below. Much of our smog problems are imported, probably some of it comes from as far as China. Definitely we get the filth of San Francisco. Its not "an ag problem". There are and were tons of ag related issues, not the least being burning and spraying, but as far as fireplaces and such, that has been drastically curtailed. Thank God.
We do have 99 running right up the middle with a congested stream of traffic that desperately needs the relief of alternatives like HSR.
We do get horrible smoggy haze that obscures the beautiful backdrop of the Sierras and nearby foothills.
Its brutal. But in my entire life I have never seen anything that frightened me like coming out of the Tehachapis on a previous trip home early in the morning to see a thick, reddish purple haze hanging over the hellish OIL town that is Bakersfield. How Fresno rates so highly in terms of bad air quality confuses me after that.
On the other hand, I almost died 12 or 13 years ago when serious asthma locked onto my lungs.
In the long run Ive decided it is a seasonal sensitivity triggered by allergens that used to simply
cause me to sneeze, but now have combined with the other air quality issues to try choking me to
death.
Fireplace burning is something I abhor, and it has become extremely unfashionable except up in the hills.
To claim that ag is the source of our current problems is so far from accurate, Ill be damned if I'll lose any sleep
over something that silly.
Of course, we do have the most corrupt city government you could ask for, and when the top crooked developer decides
he wants to turn a large parcel of land in the middle of where we keep our black population into an Almond Orchard, they
pass rules allowing "Urban gardening". Who cares about the horrible spraying and dust associated with those activities?
Theyre only black people.
Who cares about the fact that there is no shortage of almond production, the price is high, so they should be able to make these
"short term" modifications to parcels they dont want to improve (we will be damned if we will do anything to provide retail or shopping opportunities for those people!) so what if it takes 5 years to reach production, with LOADS of water WE DONT HAVE.
Thats where the filth is in Fresno.
City Hall.

[REP]

12. The drought isn't helping.

In Silicon Valley, we've had an unusually high number of bad air days. Almost all of December was a 'spare the air' day.

[Cleita]

13. Of course it doesn't and when the trees and shrubs die that depend

on seasonal rain, it will turn into a dust bowl. Even though many are dormant right now like the grapevines, this is actually their growing season, underground. They need that soaking and filling of the water table during winter.

[Art_from_Ark]

26. It might be a little more complicated than that

Smog drifting in from the Bay Area, for example, may be a major contributor, although agriculture is undoubtedly also a major culprit.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2002/2002-08-10-calif-smog.htm

[Le Taz Hot]

31. No . . .

(I knew it)

The Central Valley's ills are caused by 24/7 vehicles running up and down Hwy 99 and I-5. We've also had no wind and no rain. AND, we get Sacramento's and San Francisco's (exempt from pollution standards) pollution via coastal breezes that blow east and then just sit here because we're sitting in a big bowl.

And next time you want to rag on the farmers around here, you might not want to do it with a mouthful of salad.

[Cleita]

34. As long as you valley residents refuse to look at ALL the causes, you

protect and enable the corporate interests that are poisoning and killing you. Also much of that traffic you are bitching about are transports that come in to collect the oil and agricultural products. If you allowed the railroad to replace that heavy truck traffic, it would help immensely, but you don't want that either.

I buy my salad at farmers markets that are local or grow my own for that reason and it would be nice to get the small family farmers dominant in the Valley again instead of the huge corporate factory farms dominating everything.

Your blind attitude, and misplaced loyalty to the huge corporations, is why there is a problem. You need to change that and elect representatives and local public leaders that will put the people and environment first instead of resisting every effort to kick out money people and effect change.

[eggplant]

14. It seems that we do. Just not the good kind.

[lob1]

15. k & R.

[JDPriestly]

16. I feel it in Los Angeles.

We went for a walk today, and the air again was so heavy. It's terrible.

Where is it coming from? Is it just our own cars? What is going on? Maybe we should do as President Carter did and require people to carpool by allowing people to drive only every other day?

Or is this smog coming from some other country?

[Shrike47]

28. I grew up in LA in the 50's, on the northeast side. The air was so thick you could see it.

I am a big fan of catalytic converters and unleaded gas.

[proud patriot]

17. I'm not in the valley but it's bad

It's bad here in the east bay .. the valley must be awful.

Come on rain !

[3Stones]

18. A CBS news report said 25%

of the smog is coming from China. The smog is being blown across the pacific...

[Cleita]

22. Convenient to blame it on someone else, but the Pacific is a huge blow over from

China. Look at a globe. We are doing this ourselves.

[defacto7]

19. It sounds like Salt Lake City

every winter.

We have horrific air here which comes up from CA and NV and sicks between the convergence of 2 mountain ranges. It's normal to have inversions for weeks sometimes. I sincerely believe (and I use the word believe very carefully to mean a personal opinion) I believe the reporting of the extremes in air are not always reported to the public here. At night the air is so thick sometimes it reminds me of Gary Indiana in the early 60s because the refineries turn off their air cleaners when it can't be directly seen. As most people know, Utah is one of the most staunch RW states and is severely controlled by ideological interests namely church, corporate and government. It's pretty bad here.

[Cleita]

23. You have a big mining smelter before you drive into SLC.

Years ago I saw the pollution it caused when driving into SLC from Nevada. I would look there first.

[defacto7]

25. Yep. That's the copper mine smelter.

The world's largest man made hole in the ground produces copper ore south and west of town about 30 miles which has it's own railway that brings it north to that smelter you are talking about in Tooele, UT off of I-80. We have more than that though. There are chemical refineries which are the ones I see from here flickering orange and red on the smog clouds at night. One you can drive by on I-5 to the north of town. We're surrounded. We also have a huge stockpile of military nerve gas just around the mountain in Tooele. Salt Lake City has the largest stockpile of nerve gas antidote in the US as well. Not too many know where that is though. And of course we have the new NSA facility but that's a different kind of pollution.

[tularetom]

27. It's a perfect storm of shitty air in the valley

Particulates from ag operations, CO from millions of vehicles (6 million people live in the valley from Sacramento to Kern County) reacting with low level ozone, and if all that weren't enough, bad air from the Bay Area carried into the valley by prevailing winds.

Add to that, local politicians who have sold out to development interests and there really isn't much hope for positive change.

We don't live there anymore but all our kids grandkids and great grandkids do and half of the youngest generation in our family already suffer from asthma.

[Shrike47]

29. In addition to drout this winter, the whole West Coast has suffered air stagnation this winter.

Air is not moving, just sitting on us.

[Le Taz Hot]

30. I'm almost afraid to look upthread.

Anything with the "California's Central Valley" brings out the geographical elitists on DU. One DUer referred to us as a cesspool. Oh yeah, and we're all stupid farmers, hicks, hayseeds . . .

The reason our air is so bad is because we've had no wind and no rain. The VAST MAJORITY of our pollution comes from vehicles up and down the I-5 corridor and Hwy 99 AND . . . wait for it . . . San Francisco. Coastal winds blow east, their pollution wafts into the Valley which is, literally, a bowl, and it just sits there.

Now I'll venture upthread (donning flak jacket).

[Cleita]

35. You want rain?

Make the changes needed to stop the corporations and politicians that are enabling global interests to cause global warming. Never, ever allow those Koch brother and other billionaire, Wall Street interests in our government again at every level.

[Sirveri]

36. I keep seeing people blaming San Francisco. What specifically in San Francisco?

Are you talking about the oil refineries, because none of those are in San Francisco. San Francisco doesn't really seem to do much of anything by itself. Oakland and Fremont still have manufacturing industrial centers, as does San Jose. San Francisco is pretty much nothing but office space and residential/commercial zones at this point though.