thinelvis 6 years ago

Truck traffic in LA is by far the problem, not so much the car traffic (though that is horrible, based on the population).

Ships come into Long Beach, the containers are offloaded, the trucks begin a lumbering journey to points East. Belching all the way.

I'm not making up the claim. California rules put in place over ten years ago had trucks retrofitted or whatever, and this change to TRUCKS ONLY was like removing 30 MILLION cars from California roads. There are not 30 million trucks in California, though sometimes it appears so.

http://4cleanair.org/DieselTrucks.pdf

  • blue11 6 years ago

    The ports of LA and LB handle something like 40% of the US-China trade.

    There are "clean trucks" requirements, but that can be enforced only in the immediate vicinity of the port. I don't have a source but there have been reports that the clean trucks shuttle back and forth between the port and nearby places where the cargo can be transferred to other trucks.

  • housingpost 6 years ago

    Don’t forget that in 2015 the NAFTA requirements that allow Mexican trucks on US roads were fully put into effect so now we’ve got heavily polluting Mexican trucks on Southern California roads now.

    • ovi256 6 years ago

      Is there a quota on that ? If not, I predict this will follow the same pattern it took in Western Europe, where low-cost of labor Eastern Europe companies are slowly taking over long distance trucking. The limiter of the rate of change is the number of available EE long-distance drivers, which the companies hiring have vacuumed clean.

  • JBlue42 6 years ago

    I got on the 710 once heading south and it was a whole different world in which it felt like there was an unbreakable chain of trucks. It also felt extremely dangerous since they really didn't care about breaking that chain to let you into a lane if you needed to exit.

    Once was enough.

  • kidsil 6 years ago

    I wonder if Tesla's truck fleet could help change the situation

  • pfranz 6 years ago

    > Truck traffic in LA is by far the problem

    Any citation on that? The article itself says the peak of pollution isn't as high, just the longevity. The article also mentions climate change modifying weather patterns which could be a contributor. As someone who lived in LA you're always preying for rain to wash out ash or smog from nearby fires (which seem more common) or pollution and precipitation has been rarer over the past few years.

    No doubt reducing pollution (and trucks have been a huge contributor) will help, but since you mentioned Long Beach, boats have very few regulations and burn giant amounts of the lowest-quality fuel.

    An addition, a bunch of recent studies I've seen over the past few years show that up to 30% of the air pollution on the west coast comes from Asia.

    It just seems like something that should be addressed on multiple fronts and with things objectively getting worse, every bit helps.

    • chrisbrandow 6 years ago

      Trucks and shops are definitley one of the biggest problems for riverside. These are the biggest source of pm2.5 precursors because the wind patterns basically funnel all of the LA basin atmosphere out there and the pollution transforms over the 24-36 hr journey.

      I used to work for air pollution regulators. I don’t have the citations but I’ve seen the presentations.

refurb 6 years ago

Los Angeles is unfortunate that due to the surrounding geography, thermal inversions are common where air close to the surface is trapped and doesn't circulate. That amplifies the air quality problems compared to say SF where the off-shore breeze keeps the air relatively clean.

  • greglindahl 6 years ago

    In the SF Bay Area, there are a lot of parts (like the entire South Bay) that have frequent inversions and usually no off-shore breezes, due to the coastal mountains. In fact we've had a big run of bad air quality days.

    With a few of the recent fires to the north of SF we've also had the charming situation in the South Bay of ocean breezes blowing the smoke from the fires over us... it was blowing down the cost offshore of SF, and then inland.

    SF != SF Bay Area

    • annywhey 6 years ago

      We've had runs spanning a week plus this season where the AQI never gets under 50...SF is not really safe when it's wildfire smoke from the north because it ends up recirculating.

      In fact we're in that kind of scenario right this minute.

  • astrodust 6 years ago

    A friend from Los Angeles used to say "I don't trust air I can't see."

  • bsder 6 years ago

    This is relatively straightforward to solve. You take the existing CA gas tax and have it increase a couple of pennies every single month indefinitely. Gasoline in California is still about 1/2 the price in Europe.

    By making the tax small and gradual, everybody can PLAN around the fact that gas is going up instead of the dislocation from when gasoline prices whipsaw.

    The problem is that we have zero political will to do this. People will attack the gas tax instead of attacking the lack of transportation options.

    • nradov 6 years ago

      There's only a loose correlation between gasoline consumption and smog emissions. Newer passenger vehicles are very clean (not counting CO₂ emissions which are a separate issue). The smog problem is caused by diesel engines, and older gasoline engines. Those need to be banned, or bought back and crushed (like with the "Cash for Clunkers" program several years ago).

      • bsder 6 years ago

        > There's only a loose correlation between gasoline consumption and smog emissions.

        For only automobiles, possibly.

        But a slow and consistent increase in petroleum price incentivizes the trucking industry as well.

        And, as the article points out, the trucking industry is responsible for huge pollution hotspots near the ports.

        • drawnwren 6 years ago

          This plan would only incentivize trucks to have a big enough gas tank to drive from Nevada to LA and back. The entire cost would pass directly to consumers.

          Before you think that's isn't possible, it's not uncommon for a semi to have a range of 2000 miles.[1]

          1 - https://www.quora.com/What’s-the-average-range-for-a-diesel-...

          • bsder 6 years ago

            I suspect the issue with truck pollution at the LA ports is idling rather than driving.

            • kwhitefoot 6 years ago

              Is idling legal in the US? It's been forbidden in the UK since 1986 or before (Road Vehicle Regulations (1986)) although not very enthusiastically enforced. Similarly in Scandinavia.

    • chimeracoder 6 years ago

      > This is relatively straightforward to solve. You take the existing CA gas tax and have it increase a couple of pennies every single month indefinitely. Gasoline in California is still about 1/2 the price in Europe.

      A tax on gas doesn't solve the surrounding geography.

      Emissions in LA have plummeted since the 1970s, but while air quality has improved in that time, it has not improved as fast as the drop in emissions would predict based on other cities. That's because of the surrounding geography - air pollution gets trapped there and doesn't clear out as easily.

      • nikanj 6 years ago

        It might get trapped for days, but it most definitely will not get trapped for months or years.

    • swingline-747 6 years ago

      That won't work in the real world, it will just tax the poorest people and accomplish nothing tangible. There's very inelastic demand for travel by car in LA because everything is so spread out, making other forms of transport unworkably moot. People have to work and live, so they're just going to hate you for making their lives harder while they have no workable options. Heck, the auto industry even had the 19th/20th c. era local commuter trains ripped up so they wouldn't compete with the automobile.

      • neuronexmachina 6 years ago

        Yeah, while I agree with part of the premise of a gas tax, it's unfortunately also a regressive tax (hits lower-income people proportionally harder).

      • adrianN 6 years ago

        Then maybe the increase of the gas tax should go hand in hand with denser zoning and public transport. Internalizing the cost of parking spaces would be a good first step.

    • seppin 6 years ago

      > Gasoline in California is still about 1/2 the price in Europe.

      And already the highest priced in the US

      • bsder 6 years ago

        And?

        The problem here is that we implicitly (and sometimes not so implicitly) subsidize the infrastructure for cars and the moment you try to start making that subsidy explicit everybody loses their minds.

        The primary issue, as people have pointed out, is that gasoline taxes tend to have a regressive effect and hit the poorest the worst. To make matters even more complicated, the poorest also tend to have the oldest cars that pollute the worst--so letting them completely off the hook isn't really a valid solution, either.

    • clairity 6 years ago

      agreed. LA, SF, and the rest of CA could have the best transportation systems in the world if we just priced in the externalities of owning (and parking) a car and used that to create better transporation infrastructure.

      as for the tax being regressive, we could provide a tax credit for low-income/low-wealth folks. even better if we could figure out a way to calculate (differential) tax on-the-fly at the pump.

      LA has started rolling out blueLA, electric cars rentable by the minute, in low-income neighborhoods. it's not a complete solution, but it helps.

  • mrhappyunhappy 6 years ago

    What are all those shipping containers being offloaded from trains and onto trucks in Commerce? I wonder how much they account for the pollution.

minimaxir 6 years ago

A neat perk of iOS/watchOS 12 is that it now supports Air Quality in the Weather app/Siri, which has been very useful over the past few days!

  • another-cuppa 6 years ago

    Why is it useful? What do you do about it?

    • Jtsummers 6 years ago

      It can be useful if you need to make a decision on how active to be outside. It’s usually not a good idea to be running/cycling (for fitness) or other similar activities outside with very poor air quality.

      • another-cuppa 6 years ago

        So if the air quality is bad, you'll drive. I see, very useful.

        • Jtsummers 6 years ago

          Or not run outside. Or if I cycle, not press hard.

    • minimaxir 6 years ago

      A few days ago it smelled and looked like smoke in San Francisco. A “Hey Siri, air quality” into the Watch returned “Unhealthy.”

      • another-cuppa 6 years ago

        So you don't trust your own eyes and nose and need "Siri" to confirm it for you?

        • minimaxir 6 years ago

          I’m not a climatologist.

  • saagarjha 6 years ago

    I think this may have been released earlier, since I think I remember this as being in iOS 11.

    • xoa 6 years ago

      AFAIK an AQI feature was actually first introduced in iOS 10, but only for a very limited set of cities/geographic areas (only ones I heard named directly were in China, which of course is both a big market and has had horrendous air quality issues they've had to grapple with). I heard it briefly vanished in iOS 11.0 actually before being reintroduced in a point update. I never had cause to use it myself back then.

      Presumably in iOS 12 the feature is both more refined and Apple has also just plain worked to get more access to the necessary data streams and integrate them. From a brief glance around at some weather related APIs I've played with before it doesn't seem like AQI data, particularly sufficiently granular, has the kind of global support that is simply universal for other more common measures. I guess as knowledge of the health effects of small PM pollution and such start to become more widely known by the public, combined with worsening climate making it more common/worse in new areas we'll see sensors and data streams for that improve worldwide, at least in urban areas.

  • r00fus 6 years ago

    Wow - Does AQ show up on the complication?

    • minimaxir 6 years ago

      Nope; only on the new Series 4 exclusive watchface.

      • gdubs 6 years ago

        Ah, bummer - my 1st generation stainless steel Apple Watch continues to serve me well, but features like this really tempt me to upgrade (shakes fist at Apple)

        • dolguldur 6 years ago

          There are third party apps like Carrot (IIRC) that have complications for air quality

  • gascan 6 years ago

    Dang, would be nice if Android had more AQI built in. The 3rd party apps are not exactly rock solid.

    • ptx 6 years ago

      My Huawei phone shows AQI in the weather app (don't know if it's Google's or Huawei's app) but only for some cities – it shows up for Beijing and Shanghai but not Paris or Athens.

      • seanmcdirmid 6 years ago

        AQI is essential to know in China, so the market adapts.

    • palcu 6 years ago

      I found the Plume app to have good information and a nice UI.

jpmattia 6 years ago

If interested, here is a link to the air quality index, as measured by purple air monitors:

https://www.purpleair.com/map#11/34.0244/-118.4531

The map extends worldwide, but only reports data from those who have purchased their monitors.

  • NickBusey 6 years ago
    • stevenwoo 6 years ago

      Geography and local weather patterns, similar to Mexico City in that regard where the city sits surrounded mostly by mountains and frequent broadly local temperature conditions trap air in the valley.

      • Forbo 6 years ago

        There's also a 113,000 acre fire burning currently.

    • justsomedood 6 years ago

      Lots of fires. For the past couple of months something has been burning here and the air has been mad much more often than not.

  • another-cuppa 6 years ago

    I'm quite concerned about air quality in the UK but according to that map everywhere in the UK is "good", even London.

    • kaybe 6 years ago

      They only seem to take aerosol into account. And if you're looking at the current data, that's a saturday morning, which most properly means the traffic is pretty low.

mrhappyunhappy 6 years ago

I read somewhere that a single fire in the area pollutes more than all of th cars combined for a year. I don’t know how much of this is true, but if it is, it seems climate change is having a much bigger impact already that we simply choose to ignore.

seanmcdirmid 6 years ago

This is all about a bad wildfire season right? Even Seattle had many bad air weeks this summer.

  • greglindahl 6 years ago

    Wildfire-related smoke has been bad, but non-wildfire-related ozone has also been bad.

mrhappyunhappy 6 years ago

When are we going to acknowledge that commuting to a city center in this day and age is a ridiculous thing to do. I would wager most of LAs output is in the form of info services that can be done from home or the burbs. I remember when gas prices were at an all time high at one point and nobody was dissuaded from driving less. People would simply complain more but suck it up and go about their routine anyway. And who can blame them?! SoCal is not traversable by any means other than an automobile. There are nutjobs who will fight tooth and nail about public transportation, specifically buses, but any resident will tell you what kind of people use those services and they can’t be convinced to. I reckon fires and geography have a lot to do with everything but unless there is a dramatic shift in public policy, ain’t nothing going to change.

j0e1 6 years ago

Looking outside of my window, I've seen the haze/fog/smog, but can't make out if it's because of polluted air or if it's just condensation- the kind you'd expect to see in high altitudes.

  • tomatsu 6 years ago

    Devices for measuring the concentration of particulates (PM10, PM2.5, and maybe PM1.0), TVOC (total volatile organic compounds), and HCHO (formaldehyde) are fairly affordable nowadays. You could get one of those.

    The air quality indoors is usually even worse than the air outside if you aren't using some filtration system. New-ish buildings release formaldehyde, laser printers release particulates and ozone, 3d printers release VOCs and particulates, and there is lots of dust generated by inhabitants and their pets.

    Sadly, the Trump administration did a rollback of emission and fuel efficiency standards. It's a big step in the wrong direction.

    Personally, I'd even ban combustion engines within city limits. It's completely insane that we poison the air we breathe 24/7.

swingline-747 6 years ago

Yuck. I remember the early 80's regularly seeing a visible smog.

Panino 6 years ago

> Joseph Lyou, a South Coast air quality board member who heads the Coalition for Clean Air, said he’s concerned that although the intensity of Southern California’s air pollution has dropped, its longevity is increasing.

If air quality becomes more consistently bad then maybe wearing a mask, like in some Asian countries, will become more socially acceptable. Sometimes I'd like to wear one but I'm scared people would treat me like I have TB or ebola.

And even on clear days, the air is still bad next to busy roads.

  • gascan 6 years ago

    Masks help with particulate, which I think is Asia's core problem (from all the coal). But most bad-air US cities struggle with ozone, and I don't think masks help with that.

    • Reedx 6 years ago

      Would just note that it depends on the mask. They often have a large amount of leakage, and can give a false sense of security.

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-airpollution-masks...

      • Panino 6 years ago

        I notice an obvious and immediate improvement wearing a mask in Asia. And according to this article, the masks tested were effective in reducing the amount of pollution inhaled. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

      • bfred_it 6 years ago

        A couple of hours in Manila’s traffic on a motorbike coated my ears with black dust. If you can even just reduce that intake by 30%, your lungs will be happier.

    • Panino 6 years ago

      Where I live has elevated levels of both thanks to wildfires. It was so bad last summer that at one point, I could barely see the house across the street. Something's got to give.

      • irrational 6 years ago

        Have you considered moving? There are lots of places that don't have these kinds of air problems.

        • akoncius 6 years ago

          but weather is so nice here /s

    • hinkley 6 years ago

      Apparently charcoal can remove some ozone, but I’d less effective when humidity is high. So putting charcoal dust in a disposable mask and breathing on it all day would do very little.

    • briandear 6 years ago

      However the masks worn on the streets in Asia don’t do anything to stop the 2.5 particulates.

      • toephu2 6 years ago

        Incorrect. A mask rated N95 filters out more than 95% of particles (PM) larger than 0.3 microns — that’s much smaller even than PM2.5 microns. Certified 3M N95 rated masks are sold all over China.

        • kaybe 6 years ago

          The question is how much air bypasses the masks at the sides. The holes there are huge and any air that passes there will basically have the full smaller particle load. Do the masks produce considerably more resistance to breathing if you press them on with your hands? That would be a sign of this happening.

      • thaumasiotes 6 years ago

        I question this; "pm2.5" is a big marketing term in China. Do you think the masks are lying about what they filter, or were you under the impression that people weren't buying pm2.5 masks?

  • adrianN 6 years ago

    There is a company called Respro that makes masks for cyclists that make you look like you're on your way to a rave, not like you have TB.

  • jorblumesea 6 years ago

    The masks generally worn in Asian countries will have no impact on pollution related health issues. The dangerous particulate size, PM 2.5, require N95/N99 rating and are specialized masks. Off the shelf surgical masks or similar cloth covers are ineffective, which are the ones commonly worn in Asia. It also depends on what pollution you are trying to combat. Particles is one thing, CO2 or O3 is a different problem to solve.

    The real solution is green energy production and electric transportation.

    • toephu2 6 years ago

      They sell N95 rated masks in almost every convenient store in China...

shams93 6 years ago

I live here in the valley and you can feel it like taking a punch from Mike Tyson in the lungs

  • shams93 6 years ago

    However it used to be far worse back when everyone was using leaded gas here in the 70s.

lwb 6 years ago

Isn't Seattle supposed to be way worse?

  • BookmarkSaver 6 years ago

    Seattle's was due to fires in surrounding regions. For whatever reason, smoke just accumulates in the Sound and lingers in the city, even for fires up in Canada. In LA, typically unless there is a fire in the immediate proximity, smoke doesn't really affect it that much. This article seems to be mostly about smog and ozone, rather than temporary air quality issues that don't really have a solution.

    But yes, from what I've read, for a couple weeks last month, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world. And if you were here, you'd believe it.

    • ed_balls 6 years ago

      Rain also helps with reducing the air pollution

    • amscanne 6 years ago

      > For whatever reason, smoke just accumulates in the Sound and lingers in the city, even for fires up in Canada.

      I don't think this is true. You could see maps, and Seattle and the sound happened to be in the path of the smoke at times. But things were also bad east of the Cascades, in various parts of B.C. etc. The smoke doesn't have a particular tendency to linger in Seattle or Puget sound.

itry2develop 6 years ago

But keep piling in those people... growth growth growth or the rich can't get richer.

Theodores 6 years ago

Can anyone summarise the article for those of us in Europe?

We can't get the LA Times here.

What has changed this year - wild fires? Or is it the problem of ten million cars pissing in the pool with no wind to clear the air. Do tell.

  • saltcured 6 years ago

    I don't have hard data to back this up, but a number of my coworkers including a weekend sailor all feel that the general coastal climate and wind patterns have changed compared to what we remember from 20 years ago.

    There seems to be much less of the strongly seasonal offshore flow (the Santa Ana winds) reaching us at the coast. This used to be a regular thing ramping up in the late summer and fall with huge wind gusts damaging local trees etc. Now, it seems like we hear about winds up in the mountains but they run out of energy (or lift above the surface?) before reaching the coast, while we can definitely feel the grit and see the brown, dirty layer of air extend out over the ocean.

    Similarly, we have all commented on the disturbance in the strongly seasonal pattern of onshore flow (June Gloom). We remember more contrast between foggy mornings with the marine layer reaching many miles inland on some mornings but retreating and burning off, tending to blue skies in mid summer. In recent years, the marine layer seems to visit randomly throughout the year and it often seems to just park slightly off shore or mere blocks inland, with haze and humidity instead of sharp boundary between blue sky and fog.

    In our coastal area between LAX and Santa Monica, we haven't had the obvious wildfire smoke impact that I saw during visits to the S.F. Bay Area this year.

  • jedberg 6 years ago

    > We can't get the LA Times here.

    You should let your MEP know how upset you are about that...

    TL;DR: We don't know why exactly, but it's a bad sign and action should be taken. But it's only slightly out of normal for this time of year.

    • ItsMe000001 6 years ago

      So.... my MEP calls the LA Times to forward my complaint? If I would want to complain, why should I not tell them directly?

      If you want to claim it's an issue of that much discussed EU law, plenty (or even most) of US websites don't have an issue serving their content to me, from NY Times, Washington Post - even Fox News has no problems (I would suspect them to be the first ones to complain about the EU)! To me that shows it's not a problem with EU law, but one with relevant people in power at the LA Times. I don't see how a message to an MEP could solve that, unless you think the EU should give in every time somebody in the US has a complaint - valid or not.

      • jedberg 6 years ago

        The LA Times has decided that the cost of compliance with GDPR is not worth the effort since they don't get any ad dollars from Europeans. That's because the GDPR is such a quagmire that it requires expensive consultants to audit compliance, and since it is untested in courts, they're not even sure they are in compliance when they are done. A lot of local US papers have made the same choice, the LA times just happens to be one of the biggest.

        Let your MEP know that the next time they want to write an extra-territorial law about technology, they should get some technologists to help them write it so that it actually makes sense.

        • ItsMe000001 6 years ago

          I refer back to what I wrote. I wish you would have read my comment instead of being in "auto-reply" mode, because it sure looks like you completely ignore 100% of what I wrote. Seems to me like you just wanted to say your prepared talking points that you picked up elsewhere.

  • Theodores 6 years ago

    "Environmentalists and community groups say the string of smoggy days is a symptom of insufficient regulation. They criticize air quality officials as too quick to blame the weather when they could be doing more to crack down on some of the biggest hubs of pollution, including truck-choked warehouses and ports and oil refineries."

    That is okay then, you down voting types keep on driving your cars whilst you blame the pollution on others.