Smog

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

One day in 1948, Caltech chemistry professor Arie Haagen-Smit took a break from trying to decipher the mystery of the flavor of the pineapple. He stepped outside his lab for a breath of fresh air but instead found himself enveloped in what he called "that stinking cloud" of smog. At the time, there was a bitter debate as to what caused smog. So Haagen-Smit decided to put aside his pineapples (he had already worked out the taste chemistry of onions, garlic and wine and had identified the active agent in marijuana)

Former President Bush had a nasty tendency to put politics ahead of science; one of the more flagrant examples of this occurred in 2008, when the Environmental Protection Agency set a weaker standard on ozone, the key ingredient in smog, than the agency's scientific advisory panel had unanimously recommended. President Obama arrived in office the following year promising to rescue us from such dangerous interference. So what is Obama doing about the smog problem? Apparently, putting politics ahead of science.

Whether it was fog or smog, thousands of travelers have been delayed since Sunday evening by the almost opaque air around Beijing Capital Airport. The delays at one of the busiest airports in the world raise questions about whether air pollution in China has gotten bad enough to derail the country's economic growth. Hundreds of flights were canceled and even the highway to the airport had to be closed. Chinese authorities insisted that the murk was fog, purely a weather phenomenon, conceding only that there was “light pollution.” However, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which has its own air monitor on the roof, reported Sunday night that the index of fine particulate matter had soared to 522 micrograms per cubic meter, which is off the charts.

People who live in excessively smoggy areas tend to have higher rates of heart disease, according to several studies. New research shows just how certain components of smog destroy cells in the heart. In research presented Wednesday, scientists exposed rats to ozone — a major component of smog when it forms near the ground from hydrocarbons — for various periods of time. The found that, compared to unexposed rats, the hearts of the rats exposed to ozone had increased levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha, which is a marker for inflammation.

Free rapid transit is the only answer to the traffic snarl and the smog. LEROY J. DAVIS Anaheim

Thank you for supporting additional research to determine the best way to rid ourselves of the scourge of smog. After living with this smoky menace for decades, it is particularly distressing to realize that our efforts at eradication are based on such minute amounts of data. Organizations such as the Coalition for Clear Air support the findings of the Air Resources Board and will continue to press for greater research into the causes of smog so that we may hasten its permanent departure.

Pollution readings from Los Angeles County Monitoring Stations over the past 12 years show that smog alerts have been more frequent in the San Gabriel Valley--where there are monitoring stations in Azusa, Pomona, Pasadena and Glendora--than in other parts of the county.

Re "Smog Rules May Be Eased," July 27: I thought the objective is to reduce smog, not to rearrange it. If successful smog reduction can be traded to other smog producers, where is the environmental gain? Wouldn't it be more effective ecologically to reward companies that reduce their smog production with tax and financial incentives, rather than to let them sell their smog credits to others who can continue to pollute? Frances Spielberg Pacific Palisades

The stalled economy's growing political cost to President Obama came into sharp relief as new employment figures raised fears of another recession and he abruptly withdrew proposed stiffer clean-air rules that Republicans and the business community have insisted would kill jobs. The Labor Department's August jobs report, the first to show zero growth in about a year, intensified pressure on Obama as he prepares to address a joint session of Congress next Thursday night about the nation's stagnant employment picture.

Former President Bush had a nasty tendency to put politics ahead of science; one of the more flagrant examples of this occurred in 2008, when the Environmental Protection Agency set a weaker standard on ozone, the key ingredient in smog, than the agency's scientific advisory panel had unanimously recommended. President Obama arrived in office the following year promising to rescue us from such dangerous interference. So what is Obama doing about the smog problem? Apparently, putting politics ahead of science.

The Obama administration, facing withering criticism from industry that environmental rules are behind the stalled economy, appears poised to miss another key deadline for new standards to clean up smog, lobbyists and environmentalists contend. After agreeing to work with environmentalists who had sued over the standards, the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed issuing rules on low-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, four times since 2010. Most recently, it brushed aside a self-imposed July 29 deadline.

Environmental and public health groups filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday, saying the agency has failed to force officials to crack down on smog in the Los Angeles Basin. The suit contends the EPA missed a May deadline to, in effect, determine whether the ozone level in the region is hazardous to public health. Such a determination could trigger tougher limits on pollution from cars, trucks, ships and refineries. The EPA did not comment on the lawsuit, which was filed by Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, Desert Citizens Against Pollution, Communities for a Better Environment and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among other groups.

In the last five years, singer and songwriter Bill Callahan has been making nouveau cowboy music, the kind that might have soothed his former self, the confessional, acerbic zinemaker who released tapes made out of his bedroom in the early '90s and went by the very unfriendly moniker Smog. But that was a long time ago. These days Callahan presents himself as a kind of pioneer, a picture of rugged individualism and other American myths that have become recurrent themes in his work as he has grown older.

As part of a crackdown on pollutants blamed for causing much of the region's smog, air regulators and several local governments have sued Home Depot Inc. for selling illegal paints and other products. Two related lawsuits filed Thursday allege that from 2007 to 2010, the nation's largest home improvement chain sold paints, wood lacquers and other coatings that contained excessive levels of smog-forming chemicals. According to the lawsuits, the illegal products were sold at more than two dozen stores across Southern California, even after the company was notified that it was breaking local air regulation laws.

Federal regulators unveiled new fuel economy labels that could make it easier for new-car buyers to compare fuel-efficient vehicles and gas-guzzlers. In the most extensive overhaul of the decals in 30 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation said Wednesday that 2013 model year cars and trucks will have more comprehensive labels detailing projected fuel costs and emissions. In addition to the miles per gallon, the labels will show, on a scale of 1 to 10, how a vehicle stacks up against competitors for smog, tailpipe emissions and fuel economy.

Smog and soot levels have dropped significantly in Southern California over the last decade, but the Los Angeles region still has the highest levels of ozone nationwide, violating federal health standards an average of 137 days a year. The city ranks second in the country, behind Bakersfield, for the highest year-round levels of toxic particles or soot, and fourth in the nation for the number of short-term spikes in soot pollution. The rankings, part of the annual "State of the Air" report by the American Lung Assn., are based on federal and state data, which show that more than 90% of Californians live in counties with unhealthful air. Unlike parts of the East and Midwest, where coal-fired power plants are a primary source of toxic pollution, Southern California's chemical stew is the product of tailpipe emissions from cars and diesel pollution from trucks, trains and ships linked to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.