After weeks of ‘very unhealthy’ air, regulators criticized for public outreach

Critics say the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District does not do enough to alert the public about hazardous air quality levels such as those that recently gripped the region for weeks.

On Friday, air pollution levels in the Fresno area dropped to “good” or “moderate,” following a stint of wind and light showers that officials say helped clear weeks of haze. But as recently as Thursday, parts of Fresno were experiencing level-5 concentrations of particulate matter – the worst ranking possible. The air reached “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy” levels everyday from Dec. 21 to Thursday, according to the Air Pollution Control District’s website, which monitors pollutants by the hour.

Dolores Barajas-Weller, director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, and others criticize the district for what they say is a lack of public outreach about dangerous conditions. While the Air Quality Coalition, an advocacy organization, has used social media sites like Facebook to warn people to stay inside during unhealthy air days over the past month, the Air Pollution Control District has not, except for one post to Twitter on Wednesday.

“We still see children playing outdoors or people using their fireplace during these episodes. This indicates the district is not doing enough to communicate to the public the severity of the problem and the impacts to health,” Barajas-Weller said. The district “should have measures in place for days like these. We’re disappointed in a lot of the planning that’s been going on. It’s been very weak.”

The Air Pollution Control District’s executive director, Seyed Sadredin, strongly refuted the criticism, saying the RAAN system, which emails or texts people about poor air quality if they sign up for alerts, is the only one of its kind in the country.

“There are actually a lot of people who think we’re a very heavy-handed agency, that think we go overboard with regulations of businesses and people in the San Joaquin Valley,” Sadredin said. “There is no district in California or the rest of the nation that does more to provide real-time air quality information to our people.”

Sadredin pointed to recent wildfires and drought conditions, and said even with the district’s regulations of wood burning, aspects of the area’s air quality are out of regulators’ control.

“Because of circumstances we have in the San Joaquin Valley, we could shut everything down, and you would not see any measurable change in air quality,” he said. “A very small amount of pollution does a lot more damage in our area than in the Bay Area where you get a nice ocean breeze.”

Kevin Hall, a longtime air activist in Fresno, said the district can and should do more – both to clean up the Valley’s air and to warn the public when it reaches hazardous conditions. He said the district’s public outreach approach is failing and makes it hard for people to understand how bad the air is.

“Rather than running a public education campaign, what they have is a public relations campaign. It’s not about awareness. The whole program is designed to placate the public rather than alert them,” Hall said. “The entire community has lost its sense of crisis. Even during these peak episodes, it’s lost on people.”

From a medical standpoint, Dr. Alex Sherriffs, who represents the San Joaquin Valley on the California Air Resources Board, puts the recent air pollution levels bluntly.

“If you have a heart attack on a bad air day, you are less likely to survive,” he said. “Anybody that has an asthmatic in the family, or pulmonary disease, they are acutely aware of changes in air quality.”

Sherriffs called the Air Pollution Control District’s alert system “cutting edge,” but said the district can do more to improve air quality.

“We live in one of the most polluted basins in the United States. Every bit of pollution that we make tends to stay here because we have stagnant air in the summer and winter,” he said. “I think the criticism, we should heed that. We can do more. We can do better. And we should, in a sense, take advantage of these particularly bad air days to increase public awareness about the individual things people can do, and the policies that would be helpful if they supported, to get us cleaner air.”

For about three weeks, the Valley has been dealing with a high-pressure system “that essentially acts like a lid and pushes all the pollution down to ground level,” according to Cassandra Melching, a representative with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Recent wind and showers helped ease the bad-air conditions, but it’s unclear if the pollution levels will rise again soon.

“In terms of emissions, it stays right here on the Valley floor and has nowhere to go,” she said. “We definitely need this break – however, it could be short-lived. It’s not the full cleanout we needed.”

The Valley saw record low levels of unhealthy air days in 2016, which Melching said was mostly due to an extra wet winter and some strong winds. But Barajas-Weller said it’s time to focus less on natural conditions and more on what humans can do about it.

“We had a drizzle and were able to push some of that toxic air out of the Valley floor, but in a few days it will be back up to hazardous levels,” she said. “The bottom line is we cannot rely on weather patterns to clean up our air. Sadly, it’s something that people have become complacent about. I think people feel like there’s nothing that can be done about it, and that’s completely wrong.”

This story was originally published January 6, 2018 at 1:00 PM with the headline "After weeks of ‘very unhealthy’ air, regulators criticized for public outreach."