Air Pollution

The percentage of Californians who believe air pollution is a "big problem" has dropped precipitously in recent years, especially in Los Angeles County and the Central Valley, among the nation's dirtiest regions, according to a new survey.

Docked in Long Beach on Wednesday with a fresh load of oil from Valdez, the Alaskan Navigator didn't look like much of a trailblazer. The massive tanker sat silently, with a few thin cables draping down to some gray metal boxes. Missing was the incessant rumble of diesel engines, which on an average cargo ship would be running constantly to keep electrical systems going -- burning quite a bit of diesel fuel and generating a significant amount of pollution.

California's proposed budget contains a major provision that would weaken air pollution regulations while saving the construction industry millions of dollars. The measure, largely overlooked in a public debate focused on taxes, would delay requirements for builders to retrofit bulldozers, scrapers and other soot-spewing equipment, slashing by 17% the emissions savings that health advocates had hoped to achieve by 2014. "There are people who will die because of this delay," said Mary D.

Up to half the aircraft that land at Los Angeles International Airport each day now use an arrival technique that saves fuel and reduces noise and air pollution in neighborhoods along the eastern approaches to the nation's fourth-largest airport, the Federal Aviation Administration has announced. Officials said Thursday that the technique also increases the safety of landings, one of the most critical phases of a flight.

Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center reopened its rooftop helicopter pad this week, six months after the state-of-the-art facility halted landings because helicopter fumes were leaking into the hospital's ventilation system. The landings, which resumed Tuesday, were cleared only after hospital officials installed more-robust filters over the facility's air intake system at about twice the cost of the original filters.

It is 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday. Along streets of grimy stucco bungalows with bougainvillea, American flags and "Beware of Dog" signs on chain-link fences, a couple of residents are hosing down lawns. It ought to be quiet, but it's not. Behind the garden walls of Astor Avenue, there's a chugging and a hissing and a clanking and a squeaking. Two yellow locomotives, hooked to cars piled high with metal containers, idle on the track of the Union Pacific. Their stacks spew gray plumes of smoke.

Air pollution in China's industrial east appears to have significantly reduced light rainfall over the last 50 years, raising the possibility that cutting pollution could ease a severe drought in the region, according to a study released Saturday. Light rain -- anything from a drizzle to 0.4 of an inch in a day -- is also crucial for agriculture, as opposed to heavy rain, which triggers floods that can wash away crops. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the number of days of light rainfall in eastern China decreased by 23% from 1956 to 2005 because of air pollution.

Air quality has improved to "good" and "moderate" levels in Los Angeles County after clouds of smoke from the nearly three-week Station fire prompted health officials to caution residents and warn against strenuous outdoor activities. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has not issued a smoke advisory since Thursday and has since reported that most unhealthy air in the Los Angeles Basin is not attributed to the fire, said spokesman Sam Atwood. "There is a small possibility where there could be some unhealthy air quality in areas that are directly impacted by smoke, but we just haven't seen that occurring in the San Gabriel or San Fernando valleys the last couple of days," Atwood said.

It's easy to see how air pollution would affect respiratory disease: You breathe in smog-filled miasma all day and the ozone, other noxious gases and small particulate matter therein can make you wheeze and cough. Pollutants can trigger asthma attacks and bronchitis in susceptible individuals. But it's harder at first blush to understand links to other conditions. In two studies reported last week, bad air was associated with higher rates of appendicitis and ear infections. The new reports have been met with surprise because neither health problem seems obviously linked with the airway or bloodstream.

California transportation officials say that a new truck expressway is needed to handle an expected post-recession trade boom at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest seaport complex. But the neighborhood that has already borne the brunt of port pollution is setting up a legal roadblock to stop it. "There are at least 21 days to 28 days a year when the air is so bad here that we do not let the children go outside to play," said Elva Carrillo, who helps her husband, Alfred, run a small private school affiliated with his Apostolic Faith Church in Wilmington, just 750 feet from the proposed truck expressway.