Most people living in California have no choice but to inhale highly polluted air. 80% of California residents live in the places with dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report by the American Lung Association. 80 out of 100 Californians, which makes 32 million people, are living in areas that have unhealthy levels of air pollution a few days every year.
Bakersfield is on the first position in these sad rankings. Los Angeles has the highest level of harmful ozone pollution which comes from smoke from cars’ tailpipes. California is making a great progress in fighting this problem but there is still a lot of work to do. For instance, Los Angeles stays the worst in the ozone pollution but it achieved its best air quality in the last three years.
The only municipality in California that did not experience days with unhealthy air pollution is Salinas. Experts say that coastal breeze helped the city save the air quality.
Bakersfield got the top position due to the most number of days with unhealthy levels of airborne particles pollution coming from the highway traffic, fireplaces, farm equipment and diesel trucks.
Air pollution is a great problem for the whole world as it is dangerous for health, leading to many chronic diseases and can even become a reason for premature death, according to the experts.
It’s sad that such beautiful cities have disgusting air qualities. Its up to use to be more progressive in our thinking to think of solutions for our children.
The combination of industrial farming and low rainfall equals high pollution, which is quite sad.
Smog makes for great sunsets in LA, but it doesn’t do much for air quality. The problem is the way the valley is situated with mountains along three directions and the ocean on the fourth. It creates almost a bowl like effect for smog soup!
Even as advances have been made in engines to reduce emissions, it’s a volume problem. People in Los Angeles love their cars and there are 7 million of them. California keeps creating stricter measures and regulations to address the problem, but until they can do something about the total number of cars on the roadways, this will remain a problem.
Bakersfield experiences the same issue. It’s a location and volume problem. Until you can convince everyday drivers (single occupancy vehicles) to change their driving habits, the smog is going to stay.