L.A. HAS WORST AIR OZONE BAD FOR 3RD YEAR, GROUP SAYS.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

For the third straight year, the American Lung Association has labeled Los Angeles as the nation's smoggiest metropolitan area, followed by three other California urban areas.

``State of the Air 2002'' ranks the region encompassing Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties as first on its list of metropolitan areas with the worst ozone air pollution, followed by Bakersfield, Fresno and Visalia-Tulare-Porterville. Houston, Texas, rounds out the top five.

California also has eight of the nation's top 10 most-polluted counties, leading with San Bernardino, which traps the lion's share of Los Angeles-area ozone against its mountains, followed by Kern, Fresno, Riverside and Tulare. Los Angeles County is eighth on the list.

Ventura County ranked 21st in the nation but still received a grade of F from the association.

``In California, you've still got air that makes far too many people sick,'' said Janice Nolen, the association's director of national policy.

The report uses data collected by ozone-monitoring stations from 1998 to 2000, which is older than other data that is currently available but more accurate because it has been thoroughly checked and corrected by federal, state and local regulatory agencies, Nolen said.

Nolen said the third annual study highlights the urgency of an ongoing effort by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to enforce a stricter nationwide ozone standard.

The study uses the EPA's newer standard of .12 parts per million of ozone, which is averaged over eight hours, instead of the older one-hour standard of .08 ppms.

Recent research has shown that those longer-term pollution episodes have more impact on people with lung ailments such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, the report said.

The agency adopted the eight-hour standard in 1997, but did not begin drafting its current enforcement plan until after February 2001, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on an industry challenge of the new standard, upholding the new level.

Clean air advocates fear it may be years before the agency completes its enforcement rules, which undoubtedly will have to withstand yet another court challenge before they become effective.

News of the L.A. area's worst-in-the-nation ranking rankled the area's clean-air enforcers at the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

``We are on track to meet all current federal air quality standards by 2010,'' Barry Wallerstein, the district's executive officer, said in a prepared rebuttal to the Lung Association report.

He did not return phone calls.

``The American Lung Association's (report) and it's F grade for the Los Angeles area doesn't do justice to the tremendous ongoing effort by businesses, local governments and individuals to reduce all sources of air pollution,'' the statement said. ``As a result of those efforts - and AQMD's regulations - the air is cleaner now than it has been before World War II.''

In fact, the district's plans call for meeting the old one-hour federal standards by 2010. Meeting the stricter eight-hour standard will be a much more difficult hurdle, experts agree.

``You can look at the numbers,'' said AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood. ``We had 100 days (above the eight-hour limit) last year versus 36 days for the one-hour standard. We're going to have to reduce emissions even further to meet the tougher eight-hour standard.''

Some reports have said the Los Angeles area was not rated worst in the nation in 1999 and 2000, falling behind Houston in the number of days it exceeded the one-hour standard in ozone-choked areas near San Bernardino and Riverside.

But in the Lung Association report, the Houston metropolitan area came in fifth, behind the Visalia area. The Houston area's home of Harris County, however, ranked sixth in the nation among counties, two steps worse than Los Angeles County.

``Part of the problem that L.A.'s got in spades is poor dispersion,'' which means still air that allows smog to collect for long period, ``which the eight-hour standard is particularly sensitive to,'' said David Jesson, environmental protection specialist in the Air Division of EPA's western region.

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Heading downtown on the Hollywood Freeway, it's not unusual to see a brown haze.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

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SMOG RANKINGS

SOURCE: American Lung Association

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