Air Pollution

Last summer, Xu Demin struggled to cut emissions from his coal-fired factories as part of China's all-out effort to clean the air for the Beijing Olympics. He could have simply waited six months. This spring, overseas demand for his farming and construction machinery has plummeted, forcing him to close two plants and lay off 300 workers. The global economic slowdown is helping to accomplish what some in China's leadership have striven to do for years: rein in the insatiable demand for coal-powered energy that has fed the country's breakneck growth but turned it into one of the world's most polluted nations.

Public health groups have filed suit against the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to force stricter rules against fumigants that contribute to air pollution. The suit, filed last week in Sacramento County Superior Court, says state regulators failed to analyze reasonable alternatives to the chemicals or to minimize the effect of volatile organic compounds from treating strawberries and other crops. "Pesticides rank among the largest contributors to California's notoriously smoggy air," said Brent Newell, legal director of the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which filed the suit on behalf of affected residents in Ventura County and the Central Valley.

Two studies released Wednesday have linked toxic air pollution in Southern California to high cancer rates and complications with birth. Exposure to traffic-generated pollution increased the risk of major complications and premature birth, a report published in Environmental Health Perspectives online concluded. By measuring pregnant women's exposure to chemicals emitted by local traffic, the researchers concluded that the risk for preeclampsia, a condition that can lead to maternal and perinatal death, increased by as much as 42% at the highest exposures.

Re "Effects of air pollution studied," June 26 So, Michael Jackson, an incomparable figure, dies shortly after going into cardiac arrest. (Front-page headlines, columns of coverage.) Meanwhile, Cerritos residents are dying from cancer-related toxic air pollution at a rate of 1,200 expected deaths per 1 million residents -- the highest in the country and more than 33 times the national average. (Six column inches on Page 19.) Albert Perdon Cerritos

Smoking a cigarette in a car makes the air inside 10 to 30 times more toxic than the air outdoors on one of Southern California's most polluted days. On Thursday, state officials put on a live demonstration of that health hazard to promote a new law that bans smoking in cars carrying minors. Neil Klepeis, a Stanford University environmental health scientist, attached sensors to the dashboard of a 1999 Toyota Corolla parked on the lot of the Hollywood United Methodist Church.

America's headlong rush to tap its enormous coal reserves for electricity has slowed abruptly, with more than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants in 20 states canceled or delayed in 2007 because of concerns about climate change, construction costs and transportation problems. Coal, touted as cheap and plentiful, has been a cornerstone of President Bush's plans to meet America's energy needs with dozens of new power plants.

Making broad pronouncements about the need to protect the health of children in their care, the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday restricted the district's ability to build schools near freeways and other sources of air pollution.

While some Americans are congratulating themselves on switching to fuel-sipping cars, their old gas guzzlers just won't die. Lowered trade barriers are giving them new life south of the border. Thousands of used vehicles from as far away as Colorado and Missouri jam tiny car lots and auto salvage yards in this gritty border city. An estimated 25,000 families make a living here hustling U.S. castoffs. Among them is Jose Zavala, a wiry used-car dealer with a trucker's cap and an eye for bargains.

The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners unanimously agreed Monday to spend $2.2 million to look at the effect of airport pollution on communities around LAX. The ambitious study, said to be the largest of its kind, will monitor Westchester, El Segundo, Inglewood and Lennox to identify the sources of pollution there and determine how much of it can be attributed to airport activities.

The Los Angeles City Council backed the first phase of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's clean-truck program Wednesday, imposing a cargo fee that will raise roughly $800 million to buy new and alternative-fuel trucks for haulers operating at the Port of Los Angeles. The council unanimously endorsed a Board of Harbor Commissioners ban on all diesel trucks built before 1989 from the port starting Oct. 1.