• Last Gasp: a Special Section of the Fresno
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• Last Gasp: A special section of the Fresno Bee The San Joaquin Valley -- the most prolific farm belt in America -- may be the most dangerous place in the United States to breathe. Ozone bathes this dusty Valley, corroding people's lungs, reducing crop yields and damaging mature pine trees in the Sierra Nevada. Smog levels spike above the health standard for hours, exposing residents to longer bouts of bad air than anywhere else in the country. Not even Los Angeles, the nation's smog king for the last half- century, has more violations of the long-term or eight-hour health standard in the last four years. And that's just the summertime problem. The Valley is inundated in fall and winter with tiny chemical clusters, called particulate matter, as well as dust and soot, which evade the body's natural defenses and lodge deep inside the lungs. The Valley is among the worst places in the country for the smallest particulates. Medical experts, who have connected these particles to higher death rates, fear these specks are more dangerous than ozone or smog. This growing air pollution crisis seems wildly out of kilter in the Valley, which is known primarily for several million acres of verdant fields and cow towns. But Fresno County has the worst childhood asthma rate in the state, and treatment of respiratory illness has become an industry. The Valley never has had a healthy air year in four decades of regulation. Public officials acknowledge the problems here are far more complex than in the Los Angeles-area's South Coast Air Basin. The Valley's bowl shape and often hot, windless climate create a perfect trap to incubate smog and hold bad air. Says Michael Kenny, executive officer of the state Air Resources Board, which polices the state's air pollution: "The topography is terrible. The weather is much hotter. With the growth of population and cars, it's a horrible recipe for the future. It has the potential to be much worse than South Coast." Geography and climate are not the only hurdles, however. The Valley faces tough federal standards and tight cleanup deadlines at a time when housing subdivisions have become a cash crop. The population will grow from 3.3 million to more than 4 million in the next decade, a swifter growth rate than almost anywhere in the state. More people, more cars, more pollution. On top of those challenges, the Valley also must overcome a legacy of government neglect, foot-dragging from industry and unexpected dirty-air sources such as dairies: State law has exempted agriculture, the $14 billion industry that defines the Valley, from air pollution permit programs for three decades. Federal officials say they will enforce a permit program soon. Surprisingly, cows are gaining on cars. Gases coming from the waste of the Valley's 2.6 million cows are projected to be the No. 1 source of organic gases that turn into ozone. Diesel trucks spew pollutants as they cruise Interstate 5 and Highway 99. Though cleaner engines and fuel are on the way, manufacturers knowingly produced 1.3 million engines that emit excess pollution to improve gas mileage and performance on the freeway. Less than 10% of the cars produce most of the automobile pollution. Yet, regulators have ignored a legislative mandate to test a system that might catch those "gross polluters." Cleanup plans have been hampered by huge errors in estimates of pollution emissions. Recent evidence shows that air officials underestimated vehicle emissions by half in the late 1980s. Asthma rates escalated out of all proportion to enrollment gains over the last decade in Fresno Unified School District. Yet, state funding for a $4.5 million asthma study on Fresno-area children didn't get started until just two years ago. Federal officials admit they didn't pay enough attention to the Valley over the past decade, opening the door for 19 deadlines to lapse on everything from minor rules to major cleanup plans. Local air authorities and other government officials defend their work, saying the Valley's complex air picture has improved. It just hasn't improved fast enough to meet standards or deadlines. Officials at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District hasten to say they have no control over 60% of the problem -- vehicles, which are regulated by federal and state officials. They point out that incentive programs and local control of "stationary" sources, such as oil refineries, have made the air cleaner despite a growing population. Their proof: The Valley has fewer violations or "exceedence" days -- when smog spikes for a short time beyond the level where lung damage can begin. "The number of federal [short-term or one-hour health standard] exceedences has dropped more than 40% since 1989," says planner David Jones of the air district. But the eight-hour or long-term violations have been fairly static, actually increasing over the last two years. The smog here doesn't hit the one-hour peaks as high or as often as in Los Angeles, but Valley residents spend more eight- hour stretches in unhealthy air. No matter how you measure the smog, nobody argues that this ugly haze is healthy to breathe. "We know ozone is an oxidant and toxic to tissue, and the longer you have exposure to toxins the worse the damage is," says Dr. David Pepper, a member of the Fresno-based Medical Alliance for Healthy Air, an advocacy group. "It would not surprise me if studies come out that say we're all going to die years earlier." What about my lungs? Breathing is the bottom line. More than 300,000 people -- 10% of the Valley's population -- are afflicted with chronic breathing disorders. More than 16% of the children living in Fresno County have asthma, a higher rate than any other place in California. Ask Patty Haury what bad air can do to your life. Haury, 62, grew up on a dairy farm seven miles outside Visalia. She and her husband, Jim, now grow citrus there. She wakes up with a sinus headache and a sore throat that don't ease until she sticks her head over a sink of hot water to loosen the congestion. During winter months, the soot in the air even invades her home. "I have been sitting here with a mask on in my own living room so I can breathe," she says of her cold-weather breathing problems. Health is a main motivator for Sierra Club member Kevin Hall, who says he wants his 11-year-old son, Joey, to grow up with clean air. When Hall speaks of his favorite air pollution target -- sprawl -- he relates it to health. "We essentially have a monster on our hands," he says. "And it's called sprawl. Its tentacles are freeways. It exhales smog. It devours open land, lays waste to inner cities, and it kills people." Health advocates shudder over long-term exposure to acrid-smelling ozone, the main ingredient in smog. They worry over the damage being done to skin, eyes and lungs. Smog, which has been heavily researched in the last three decades, may not even be the worst threat. New studies show small-particle pollution is connected to high death rates. The naturally hazy Valley gets soot and particles from fireplaces, farm burning and pollutants reacting with ammonia from dairies. Diesel particles are the scariest, researchers say. The tiny pieces shot into the air from diesel engines are not only a lung irritant and a trigger for lung conditions, but the state also says they are toxic. Diesel truck rigs drive thousands of miles daily in the Valley, and hundreds of diesel irrigation pumps run around the clock in summer. Combine these particles and corrosive smog in this big bowl, and you see why officials fear the Valley is the heir apparent to Los Angeles as the nation's dirtiest air basin. Faced with this reality, people who have children with lung problems sometimes alter their lives for better breathing air. Paul Price, 38, a California State University, Fresno psychology professor, drives 45 minutes from his pine-surrounded Oakhurst home to his job on the Valley floor. He does it for his 8-year-old son, Joseph. The boy's asthma was almost out of control when they lived within a 15-minute drive of the Fresno State campus. "It literally was every day he would get up and the first thing he would do is sneeze a dozen times and have to blow his nose and cough," Price says. Since the family moved in April 2001, Joseph is off asthma medication, says his mother, Barbara. The Prices still miss the convenience and the communal relationships of living close to the university, and the friends they had made since moving to Fresno from Michigan in 1996. Paul Price says he was not pleased with the idea of moving to Oakhurst, which is just above the Valley's suffocating layers of pollution. But Joseph's deterioration seems to have stopped. A dusty valley Dirty air is nothing new in the San Joaquin Valley. Pioneer William Brewer gazed across the Valley in the 19th century and saw haze and dust -- lots and lots of dust. "Dust fills the air ... It covers everything," Brewer wrote in his journal. "I cannot conceive of a worse place to live." More than a century of modern civilization has only made things worse. Much worse. And far more complex. Consider: The smog-forming gases in the Valley amount to less than half the amount in the Los Angeles area.