Craig Miller/KQED

Soot comes from diesel trucks, industrial emissions and fires.

Two California counties are already behind the eight-ball with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new limits on soot. San Bernardino and Riverside are the only counties in the country that the EPA projects will not be able to adhere to the upper limits of its new range.

Soot has been linked to asthma, heart attacks and strokes and it’s also a culprit in climate change. The nasty stuff, also known as black carbon, comes from smoke from fires, diesel tailpipes and industrial emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing an update to its national air quality standards, which seeks to lower the amount of soot in the atmosphere. The new rule would limit the annual exposure to fine particle pollution to between 12-and-13 micrograms per cubic meter. The current standard is 15 micrograms per cubic meter.

The New York Times’ Green blog writes that the EPA had delayed issuing the politically volatile proposal until it was ordered to by a federal court judge. California was one of the states that challenged the delay:

The E.P.A.’s proposal comes as President Obama faces both a re-election battle focusing on his handling of the economy and fierce opposition from Congressional Republicans on any new environmental regulation. In one concession, the administration backed off last September from efforts to tighten ozone regulations — a delay that has also been challenged by states and public health advocates in federal court.

The proposed soot rule is certain to be debated until a final particulate level for the new standard is set after the November elections.

The EPA says it expects that 99% of counties in the U.S. will be able to achieve these new standards by 2020. A map [PDF] shows which counties won’t make the cut; aside from the California counties, there are a few others around the country that won’t be able to attain the stricter 12 micrograms per cubic meter.

The EPA will accept public comments and hold two as-yet-unscheduled hearings on the proposal — one of them will be in Sacramento. It will issue the final rule in December.

By Sam Harnett

Gundi Vigfusson

The Salton Sea, northeast of San Diego, is an important stop on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds. Millions of birds stop there every year.

Last month the California Supreme Court upheld a water transfer deal that sends billions of gallons of water a year from Imperial County farms to cities in San Diego County. The 2003 deal is the largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer in the history of the United States, and it will have major environmental and economic impacts on the region. One of the areas most dramatically affected will be California’s largest — and in many ways its most notorious — inland body of water: the Salton Sea.

The Salton Sea has a fraught history. It used to be part of the Colorado River Delta, but with the diversion of water the area has become desert. In 1905, a massive flood caused the formation of the current Sea, and during the following decades it became an iconic resort location, drawing fishermen and pleasure seekers from across the country. In the 1970s, the Sea fell from favor. Rising salinity killed all the sport fish, celebrities stopped coming, and the resort developments were abandoned. Today, the only water the Sea receives is agricultural run-off from nearby farms, and without that water, the Sea will disappear in a matter of years.

There are two major concerns if the Salton Sea dries up. The first is a public health issue. The Sea currently covers 376 square miles of toxic seabed. Over the last 100 years, the sand has absorbed all the pollutants from the agricultural run-off of nearby farms. Because of the high salt content, the toxic dust can become airborne with a breeze of just five-to-ten miles per hour. The Sea reaches a maximum depth of 50 feet, so a foot of elevation loss translates to miles of exposed seabed. Imperial County already has violent dust storms and health officials worry that the increased exposure of salt dust will further deteriorate air quality.

The second concern is ecological. While tourists no longer flock there, the Sea is still a popular stop for birds — one of the few remaining waterways in Southern California for migratory birds on the Central, Atlantic and Pacific flyways. The others have dried up as water has been diverted for agricultural and urban uses. The Audubon Society says that more than 400 different species, adding up to millions of birds, stop over at the Salton Sea each year. Michael Cohen, a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, says without the sea there will be massive bird die-offs and possibly extinctions.

The water transfers have shortened the timeline for the Sea’s decline. As part of a 2003 deal, the Sea will receive “mitigation water” until 2018, to offset diversions to San Diego County. Even with this water, the Sea is losing almost a foot of depth a year. Once that water stops flowing, the Sea will change dramatically. Cohen describes it as “falling off a cliff.” His dire predictions for the Sea’s future appear in a 2006 report he drew up for the Pacific Institute.

While the mitigation water still flows, the state was supposed to come up with a plan to prevent the ecological and public health disasters. They drafted a full restoration plan in 2003 with a price tag of about nine billion dollars. When the recession hit, the plan was shelved entirely. Before the mitigation water runs out, local groups are fighting to establish smaller projects that will mitigate the impending calamity.

In the south, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) wants to set up 750 acres of wetlands around Red Hill Marina. The shore has receded markedly over the last decade, and the toxic white seabed now surrounds the entire hill. To pay for the project, the district wants to end the mitigation water four years ahead of schedule. Currently, the district compensates farmers who have had to fallow their fields because the mitigation water has been sent to the Sea instead of their crops. If they don’t have to pay the farmers, the district thinks it can raise $60-70 million for restoration projects.

Local environmental groups in the north have a completely different agenda. Debi Livesay works for the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, who own miles of coast around the north of the Sea. She has managed to set up 65 acres of wetlands and bird habitat with only limited help from the state. The Torres Martinez Tribe has plans to expand the project, but Livesay says they won’t be able to move forward without the time buffer afforded by the mitigation water.

Livesay says that ending the mitigation water early would be a devastating blow to her projects and one more chapter in the Salton Sea’s tumultuous restoration story. Livesay claims that the Torrez Martinez Native Americans were left completely out of the loop on the original water transfer deal. Afterward, she says the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) used a technical loophole to prevent the tribe from getting state restoration funds. Officials want the tribe to complete a state environmental report, but because the tribe is a sovereign entity it can only complete a federal environmental report, which DFG won’t accept. Livesay says this kind of frustrating roadblock has been the norm in the fight to keep the Sea from itself sliding toward environmental disaster. I was unable to reach anyone at the Department of Fish and Game who could comment on Livesay’s statements in time for this story.

The Torres Martinez Tribe and IID disagree on the water mitigation schedule, but they agree on one thing: the only way to save the Sea is for the state or federal government to enact a large-scale restoration program. In the meantime, the Sea continues to shrink.

Listen to my radio story about the Salton Sea Monday morning on The California Report.

This post originally appeared on KQED’s State of Health blog.

Getty Images

Farming in the Central Valley contributes to the poor air quality there.

As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about, now doctors are predicting that climate change will harm people’s respiratory health. The American Thoracic Society is so concerned it filed a report with two goals. The Society not only wants to raise awareness with doctors so they can take preventive measures with their patients but also is enticing researchers to take on the question for further study. They found that climate change has a direct impact on air quality. A hotter climate, wildfires, more pollen in the air and rates of airborne diseases are worsening respiratory health worldwide.

Climate change will likely affect different places in different ways, but in California it could mean hotter summers and more wildfires. The itchy eyes and sneeze-inducing allergies that plague many people during pollen season could also hang around longer if weather patterns continue to change. All of that is bad for asthmatics, children and the elderly, but also for poor people – as it turns out.

“It was really an eye opener for us,” said Kent Pinkerton, a professor of pediatrics at UC Davis and the lead author on the report. “We were really not aware of the implications of change in temperature on respiratory health. But it really is a global issue. It’s not just a concern for here in our country,” he added. In some parts of Africa and Turkey desertification and increased particulates in the air have already forced people to relocate, often into cramped conditions, which further heightens their risk for respiratory diseases.

In California, wildfires are a blazing example of how increasing dryness and changing weather patterns harm people’s lungs. Pinkerton pointed to the summer of 2008. “We had over 1000 wildfires burning at the same time. And that really had a significant impact on air quality and particle concentration within the atmosphere,” he explained to me. Another big change — doctors are seeing infections from molds not seen before in California. “I think a good example of this has been a fungal type of infection that was only found in Central America, that is now found as far north as British Columbia, in Canada,” said Pinkerton.

So far the people most at risk are those with preexisting lung conditions, the very old and the very young. But in California’s Central Valley some of these affects have gotten so bad that doctors are seeing them in all age groups.

“I’m seeing an increase in the last 19-20 years in the number of patients I’m seeing who are experiencing chronic lung disease,” Kevin Hamilton, deputy chief of programs at Clinica Sierra Vista in Fresno told me. ”If we see continued changes in the climate you will see resulting problems in people’s health,” he continued. Hamilton is a respiratory therapist who treats mostly low-income patients, often Latino farmworkers making their living in the Central Valley. He says in his experience if air pollution is high, people pass a threshold where they keep getting sick. He says the San Joaquin Valley often has more than 150 days a year that break the health statutes for particulate matter, fine particles in the air that can affect people’s lungs. Consistent poor air quality exacerbates — and can cause — illnesses like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In Hamilton’s 34 years of treating lung diseases he says he thinks it’s getting worse. Something else different — he’s seeing problems in all age groups among his low-income patients, something he doesn’t see with wealthier patients.

John Capitman, the Executive Director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute and a professor of public health at CSU Fresno, says not all lung problems are created equally in the Central Valley. In fact, he’s also done research [PDF] that links the poorest air quality and the poorest health to communities that are low-income and often segregated. “In some of our more affluent communities we have health status outcomes that are similar to anywhere else in the country,” Capitman explained. “But in other communities, particularly low-income communities, places that are racially segregated basically, there is evidence that life expectancy is much lower.” Life expectancy is not linked solely to air quality, but exposure to high levels of particulate matter, ozone and pesticides are a contributing factor to the overall poor health that these communities experience.

That disparity is true around the world. Pinkerton’s report makes clear that many respiratory illnesses linked to a changing climate have a socio-economic component. The people in Africa being forced to relocate are often the poorest, just as the farmworkers in the Central Valley bear the brunt of poor air conditions and increased ozone.

GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

The most at-risk families are lower-income and live in more urban areas than the less vulnerable familes.

A study by the California Department of Public Health finds that people in poorer areas of Los Angeles and Fresno Counties are more at risk of ill health effects from climate change than those in wealthier neighborhoods. The report found that in LA, neighborhoods on the coast were the most vulnerable, mostly because of sea-level rise, though it also blamed “poor public transit, wildfire risk, and a large proportion of elderly living alone.” In Fresno, there were similar issues (aside from the obvious fact that sea-level rise won’t directly affect the landlocked county).

Our content partner California Watch reported on the study (PDF) today.

The department examined social and environmental factors ranging from the rising sea level to public transportation access and found that African Americans and Latinos living in these counties are more likely to be exposed to health and safety risks related to poor air quality, heat waves, flooding and wildfires stemming from climate change.

“Clearly, climate change risks are not equal across the state or within individual counties,” according to the report. “Identifying communities at greatest risk is a necessary step in efficiently employing limited resources to protect public health.”

The introduction to the study mentions California’s cap-and-trade program, saying some of the projected $1 billion raised from carbon trading should go to help mitigate effects in vulnerable communities.

Why climate change and public health policy make good chemistry

A major study released today in Fresno details the direct link between higher levels of air pollution and asthma-related ER and hospital admissions. So, what’s that got to do with climate change? Plenty.

Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images

Tourists snap photos of a murky sunset in San Diego

“There’s a division in the public’s mind between global warming and health effects of pollution,” says Dimitri Stanich of the California Air Resources Board.

In reality, there’s significant overlap. Some components of air pollution shown to have harmful warming effects on the planet are also harming people, especially children, right now.

Let’s start with ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone is different from the ozone layer, which lies about 15 miles above the earth (not exactly ground level). The ozone layer shields us from most of the sun’s harmful rays. Ozone is good in the atmosphere but bad, in many ways, at or near ground level.

Ground-level ozone is not part of air pollution itself. Instead, it is formed by a complex chemical reaction starting with the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) component of air pollution. That chemical reaction is especially strong when the air is calm and the sun is shining (California’s Central Valley in the summer, anyone?). This stuff is terrible for your lungs.

“Ozone has the same corrosive aspects of bleach,” explains Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director for the American Lung Association in California. “When people breathe it in, it damages the lining of the lungs. It’s like getting a sunburn on the lungs. It triggers coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks,”

Ground-level ozone is also a greenhouse gas. So, while it’s harming people today, it’s simultaneously helping to warm the planet. If that’s not enough, ground-level ozone’s corrosive properties harm crops, too. The Central Valley may be the nation’s salad bowl, but it’s ground zero for ground-level ozone.

Then there’s “black carbon.” If you think that sounds ominous, you’re right.Tiny particles of black carbon can lodge deep in a person’s lungs (bad) or circulate in the air and contribute to global warming (also bad). And, in a triple whammy, if black carbon particles land on arctic snow, they can accelerate the ice melt. Scientists say black carbon is a major contributor to climate change, perhaps second only to CO2. Black carbon comes from, among other things, the burning of fossil fuels, the stuff that comes from tail pipes and smokestacks.

Sunday’s New York Times featured a depressingly detailed account of Americans’ waning interest in global warming. Climate skepticism is on the rise, at least in political circles. While skepticism about the health effects of air pollution isn’t polled as much, it seems reasonable to think there’s little argument there.

This is where we get to what policymakers call “co-benefits.” Ms. Holmes-Gen points out that ground level ozone and black carbon are both fairly short-lived in the environment. “It’s a huge bang for the buck. If we reduce air pollution, we’ll see an immediate health benefit and we get warming pollutants out of the air, too.”

Lisa Aliferis is a health news editor at KQED. The complete smog & health study referred to at the top of this post is available as a PDF download from Fresno State University.

Reed Galin

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released an interactive tool today that maps climate-related health risks across the country, including extreme heat, poor air quality, drought, flooding, and infectious diseases. The maps present a snapshot of current health vulnerabilities using recent data at the state and county levels.

“If we stay on our present course, we can expect these health vulnerabilities from climate change to accelerate” said NRDC Senior Scientist Kim Knowlton on a conference call with reporters. “We need to prepare for the worst in extreme events and the health vulnerabilities that will result.”

According to the NRDC, one of the main health impacts Californians are facing with climate change is air pollution.  A recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California finds that two-thirds of Californians already see air pollution as a big problem.  The NRDC tool asserts that 90% of Californians live in areas that violate air quality standards, and that climate change will worsen this by bringing smoggier and hotter days.

Highlighted in red are California counties experiencing several unhealthy ozone days. Map: NRDC

The tool illustrates that the Central Valley and Southern California regions already experience several more extreme heat days each year “than expected,” and asserts that more are on the way, according to climate projections. It also plots out the state’s water crunch, which some California cities are already grappling with.

In addition to laying out the challenge, the tool also links to recommendations for adapting to increased health risks from climate change, including a section on California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy.

“We hope that our national maps will be used as a provocation for people to look and say, ‘Gee, we really need to dig in deeper,’” said Knowlton.

The tool’s data comes from a variety of sources, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Lung Association.

Flooding along San Francisco's Embarcadero during an extreme high tide in February. (Photo: Heidi Nutters/Flickr)

Even if the world stopped emitting all greenhouse gases today, scientists say, the climate would continue to change, perhaps for centuries, before it stabilized.  Since a zero-emissions world is unlikely, to say the least, and considering that global carbon emissions are continuing on their upward trend, finding ways to adapt to what many see as inevitable is getting more and more attention.

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a local think tank focused on sustainable growth, has just released a 40-page report that outlines the Bay Area’s biggest climate risks and lays out a road map for how communities can start preparing.

The upshot?  We’ve got a lot of work to do.

“We need to beginning planning on many fronts because climate change is going to affect the way we do business. It’s going to affect everything from people’s health to property values on the shoreline,” said SPUR’s Laura Tam.

The report finds that the climate change impacts most threatening to the Bay Area are more intense heat waves, water uncertainty (droughts, wildfires, extreme storms and flooding), and sea level rise. It lays out step-by-step instructions for addressing these risks, in terms of public safety and health, water supply, transportation infrastructure, biodiversity, and the region’s energy supply.

Heat waves are a big focus of the report, which, if you live in San Francisco like me, may seem improbable.  Yet, Tam says it’s exactly places like San Francisco that are most vulnerable to increased heat waves because we’re not prepared for them.  (How many people here do you know with air conditioning?)

The report says that by 2100, the Bay Area may experience between 74 and 90 days above 81 degrees Fahrenheit per year.  Throughout the 20th century, the Bay Area averaged about 12.  An increase like that means greater risk for heat-related illnesses and some infectious diseases, as well as poorer air quality.  To address this, SPUR recommends communities identify vulnerable populations, reduce the “urban heat island effect” by promoting white roofs and urban forestry, build communications and public warning systems, and develop robust “heat response plans” and air quality monitoring programs.

Will Travis, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and a SPUR board member, said that cash-strapped cities and towns have been “reticent” to deal with climate change adaptation because it can seem like a problem of the future.  But, communities are going to have to act soon to avoid a crisis that’s both environmental and economic, he said.

“Our region is not going to be able to remain competitive and attract the capital we need to make our innovative economy grow if we don’t address this problem right now,” said Travis.

According to BCDC, the Bay Area may see 55 inches of sea level rise by 2100. The SPUR report says that means more than 186 miles of major roads (including I-80, I-880, U.S. 101, Highway 37, I-680, and Highway 12), more than 105 miles of regional rail track, and 93% of Oakland Airport and SFO property will be vulnerable to flooding.

“That transportation infrastructure is the lifeblood of what makes our economy work,” said Travis. “We need that mobility, so we’re going to have to be retrofitting those facilities to make sure that they don’t go underwater.”

The report recommends agencies conduct a comprehensive transportation vulnerability assessment, design resilient new transportation projects, and develop emergency transportation alternatives for cases of extreme weather events.

The report is dense and detailed, and it’s a sobering look at exactly how much needs to be done to prepare for what many state and regional agencies agree is likely on its way. Odds are, none of this will be cheap. And yet, according to SPUR’s Laura Tam, beginning to deal with climate change impacts now could save money as well as lives.

“If we don’t start planning ahead and preparing, we will end up dealing with crises that emerge as emergencies, and we don’t want to be in the position of having to respond to climate emergencies,” she said.  “We want to know what to expect, and be prepared, so that the least amount of property is damaged and the least amount of people suffer.”

In fact, last month the federal EPA’s new director for San Francisco-based Region 9 made an astonishing claim on KQED’s Forum program. Jared Blumenfeld said that more Californians die from air pollution than from car wrecks. When a caller asked him to back up the claim, Blumenfeld provided the following statistics:

- Traffic-related fatalities: 3,949 deaths per year from 3,535 fatal collisions (average for 1999-2008)
- Deaths associated with PM2.5 exposure above 5 ug/m3 in California : 18,000 deaths per year

Cars are doing double duty in these statistics, since passenger vehicles are a large source of air pollution. Over the decades the state has addressed this fact with landmark efforts to regulate vehicle emissions, in efforts initially to improve local air quality and more recently, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In a new study released this week by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC),  researchers looked at two state priorities: reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and improving air quality to benefit public health, and evaluated the effectiveness of four potential transportation strategies to address both.

What they found is something that policymakers have known all along: there are no easy answers.  And everything involves a trade-off.

PPIC research fellow Louise Bedworth compared the cost, public health benefits, and GHG reduction potential for various alternative-fuel vehicles; battery-electrics, fuel cell, ethanol, and for reducing overall vehicle miles.  What she found is that transforming California’s vehicle fleet to battery-electric vehicles provides the greatest public health benefit, but that high costs and technological uncertainty make this option far from ideal.

On the flip side, said Bedsworth, while we have the technology for vehicles to run on corn-based ethanol, research shows that when indirect land-use costs are considered, corn-based biofuels provide no significant public health or climate change benefit.

But while the PPIC looks at local health and global warming effects separately, a new study out of Stanford has found that the two are directly linked. It’s well established that carbon dioxide contributes to global warming and that increased temperatures can exacerbate air pollution, but the new study shows that CO2 “domes” that develop over urban areas are, in fact, causing health problems for city-dwellers.  The study, conducted by civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobsen, looked at models for the contiguous 48 states, for California and for the Los Angeles area. Results showed an increased death rate in all three areas compared to what the rate would be if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted.

Neither current regulations, nor the federal cap-and-trade bill passed by the House address the local effects of CO2 emissions on health.  Jacobsen says that this study provides evidence that they should.  He estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50-to-100 deaths per year from local CO2 emissions in California.

Jacobsen talks about his study in the video, below.

Photo by Genie Gratto

Many believe that climate change presents us with opportunities to tackle multiple problems with a single well-designed response. The authors of this guest post suggest that public health presents one of those opportunities.

Public Health and Climate Change: A Shared Agenda

by Marice Ashe and Richard Jackson

Climate change may be the greatest threat to human health in this century. More intense heat waves will make bad air even worse. More severe droughts and floods will further imperil the water supply California is already struggling to protect. The world is going to see a rise in the number of water-, food-, insect- and animal-borne diseases we have to fight.

Who will suffer most? The elderly, children and the poor—populations that are least able to and can least afford to adapt to such extreme conditions. Although public health leaders have a responsibility to protect and enhance the well-being of the entire population—and especially those most at risk—we have lagged behind in considering climate change as one of the threats that we must confront.

In March, we released An Action Plan for Public Health: Initial Recommendations for Involving Public Health in Climate Change Policy, assembled after talking to more than 150 experts in public health, climate science and environmental law. We hope it helps the public health community think in new terms about their mission.

We must work faster, because making communities healthier can prevent climate change. For example, we work with communities all around California to create safe walking paths and bike routes throughout cities. We encourage these changes to prevent obesity and increase community safety. But when people get out of their cars, they also put less carbon emissions in the air. We call this a “co-benefit:” by taking one action to improve physical health, we gain other benefits to improve planetary health.

Other co-benefits happen when we encourage the development of new housing and retail centers close to public transit. This increases exercise while keeping people out of their cars. But why stop there? Transit-oriented development also preserves agricultural lands for food production and protects our food security. With anticipated changes in rainfall, agricultural pest and disease patterns will shift, too.  Safeguarding a regionally based and resilient food system should be a primary public health goal in addressing climate change.

We are working with communities to make it easier to hold farmer’s markets, get more healthy foods in corner markets, and increase fresh fruits and vegetables in schools. This is particularly critical in poor and under-served areas where it’s harder to find healthy and affordable food. The public health goal is to lower rates of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, which are epidemic in those communities. As a co-benefit, it expands opportunities for local and regional growers who bring the food a much shorter distance on the way to market, thus dropping transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Improving public health will mitigate climate change, and fighting global warming will make people healthier. By approaching this impending public health disaster from many directions, we stand a better chance of making a real difference.

Marice Ashe, JD, MPH directs Public Health Law & Policy, which partners with advocates, health departments, and policy-makers to create healthier communities. PHLP provides in-depth research and analysis on legal and policy questions, and translates complex information into practical tools and model policies for community action.

Richard Jackson, MD, MPH is the Chair of the Environmental Health Sciences division of the UCLA School of Public Health. He is the former director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and California State Public Health officer.  Dr. Jackson is a member of the PHLP Board of Directors.

Greg Rau of UC Santa Cruz cast the mandatory pall-of-the-day with a blunt assessment of the battle against global warming: “We are failing to mitigate atmospheric CO2.” Too much of growing energy demand is being met with fossil fuels, Rau explained. “We need to urgently think about this.” Most of Rau’s talk was devoted to the problem of ocean acidification, recently profiled by my colleague Lauren Sommer for Quest Radio.

One guy who’s done a lot of thinking about it is Hashem Akbari, who will take the lectern today to call upon cities around the world to move rapidly toward “cool roof” policies. Akbari, who works at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has been a long-time advocate of using reflective roofing and paving materials to help offset the effect of “urban heat islands.” He says that replacing the roof of one typical suburban home (about 1,000 square feet) can produce a CO2 “offset” of four metric tons. He adds that replacing flat commercial roofing with white “cool” roofing or coatings can increase the solar reflectance of the roof from as low as 10% to as high as 80% (at least until it gets dirty). I  interviewed Akbari for a Quest Radio piece on heat islands last year.