During worst air pollution period ever, Valley Air District delivers hazy warnings
How many colors are there in a rainbow of polluted air?
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency and your smart phone’s weather app, the answer is six: green, yellow, orange, red, purple and maroon.
Each of those six colors corresponds to an air pollution category as measured by the Air Quality Index: Good (green), Moderate (yellow), Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (orange), Unhealthy (red), Very Unhealthy (purple) and Hazardous (maroon).
The Valley Air District, however, only recognizes five colors in the system it uses to inform residents in eight San Joaquin Valley counties of pollution levels in their communities: green, yellow, orange, red and purple.
What’s missing? Maroon. “Very Unhealthy” is the highest level. So no matter how bad the air pollution gets — worse than ever lately, as air district officials themselves admit — the air district’s Real-Time Air Advisory Network never tells the public the air outside is “Hazardous” to breathe as defined by federal health standards.
Isn’t that a little odd? Prompted by a reader’s email, I did some research and asked a few local experts. What I’ve learned is there were valid reasons why the air district, in 2010, went away from AQI and adopted the RAAN system to inform school officials and parents when it was safe for kids to exercise outdoors.
A decade later, much has changed. First, AQI and RAAN measure pollutants the same way, which wasn’t the case when RAAN was developed. Second, anyone with a smartphone can check AQI by pushing a button and giving a voice command. RAAN, delivered via email or text for those who sign up, causes unnecessary confusion.
Third, California’s escalating wildfires have resulted in unprecedented concentrations of PM 2.5, the microscopic pollutants that can have both short- and long-term health consequences. Meaning there are more days and hour-by-hour periods when the five-color rainbow understates the gravity.
When the feds deem the air outside “Hazardous,” Valley residents shouldn’t be told “Very Unhealthy” by their own air district.
During extreme events people need to be jolted — not given the same mild cautions to which they’ve become accustomed.
Real-time alerts?
This lack of urgency speaks to another area where the air district’s RAAN system doesn’t adequately serve the public health.
In short, it lags and lacks consistency.
I recently signed up to receive RAAN alerts. Every time PM 2.5 or ozone levels reach “Unhealthy” in Clovis, an email supposedly lands in my inbox. Tuesday, I got five emails. Wednesday, I got zero — even though both pollutants got there, according to the district’s own air monitor. Thursday, the emails resumed.
But that’s not the biggest issue. RAAN is purported to provide air pollution levels in “real time.” Except it doesn’t, not really. Check the fine print. In fact, the air district’s pollution readings are updated once per hour at some 20 minutes past.
So those RAAN figures aren’t “real time” at all. They can be an hour old, sometimes more. With pollutant levels constantly rising and falling throughout the day, it leaves room for a lot of guesswork. When it’s time to walk the dog, you want to know what the air quality is now — not what it was 75 minutes ago.
Frankly, what good is that?
Here’s another problem with RAAN: It relies on data only from official air district monitors.
Fresno has five official air monitors but only three measure PM 2.5 and ozone levels. In a city of 116 square miles, that’s few and far between. (There’s also one in Clovis that measures both.) The further away someone lives from an official monitor, the less its readings tell them about pollutants outside their front door.
Useful PurpleAir readings
Valley residents seeking current air quality levels have better options than RAAN. The most up-to-date data is provided by owners of low-cost air monitors, of which PurpleAir is the most common.
There are about three dozen PurpleAir monitors throughout the Fresno-Clovis metro area. (We can thank teenage asthma sufferer Kieshaun White for some of them.) As opposed to official air monitors that can cost several hundred thousand dollars, nearly anyone can buy a PurpleAir monitor for $250.
Even though studies show low-cost monitors give higher PM 2.5 readings than those used by regulatory agencies, their readings are consistently higher. Meaning they can be mathematically calibrated to provide true pollutant levels.
The data is accurate enough for the EPA to create a website (fire.airnow.gov) that taps into readings from PurpleAir and other inexpensive monitors. Valley residents can also utilize SJVAir.com, which is operated by a collaborative of local nonprofits.
Let’s sum up: No matter how high air pollution levels climb during the worst wildfire season on record, the Valley Air District will never tell residents the air they breathe is hazardous to their health. Nor does the district provide those who’ve signed up for “real-time” alerts the most current data for their neighborhoods.
Curious posture for a public health agency, don’t you think?
This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 8:52 AM.
