Fire-choked Yosemite has dirtier air than Beijing

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

A major wildfire burning on the western edge of Yosemite National Park has generated so much smoke that air pollution levels in Yosemite Valley are worse than in Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities.

At the height of summer tourist season, choking levels of soot have exceeded U.S. federal health standards in the valley — in some cases up to seven times higher than the recommended limit, and well above what is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as “hazardous” for all people, even healthy adults, to breathe.

“I’ve never seen numbers this high, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” said Dave Conway, deputy officer for the Mariposa County Air Pollution Control District, on Monday.

The Ferguson fire began July 13. It has now burned an area larger than the city of San Francisco. And as flames ravage through brush and dead trees from California’s recent drought, the fire is generating an enormous amount of soot.

Air quality monitoring equipment at the Yosemite Visitor Center has registered particulate pollution in the valley every day since July 15 at levels at least twice the concentration measured by as the air monitor on top of the U.S. embassy in Beijing over the same time period. Last Wednesday, the peak particulate levels in Yosemite Valley were nearly five times as high as in China’s capital city — 518 vs. 106 micrograms per cubic meter of particulates in the air. The EPA classifies anything over 35 averaged over 24 hours to be unsafe.

What should visitors do?

“Go home,” said Conway. “I hate to be that blunt about it, but it is not going to be the experience they want and the air is going to be hazardous at times. If people have any known heart concerns, breathing concerns or if they have kids, people should avoid the park.”

Exposure to particle pollution can cause serious health problems, including asthma attacks, acute bronchitis and heart attacks. It also can increase the risk of respiratory infections.

In addition to an advisory from Mariposa County’s Health Department, the San Joaquin Valley air pollution control district issued an air quality alert last Tuesday for the foothills and mountain areas of Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, and Tulare counties due to the Ferguson fire.

On Monday Yosemite National Park remained open. But that could change.

Already, one of the main roads into the park, Highway 140, is closed, as is Glacier Point Road. Views of the Yosemite Falls, Half Dome and other landmarks are all but gone, and tourists in the valley increasingly are wearing bandannas and medical masks. Bike rentals and open tram tours have been limited, and restaurant hours are being cut back, said Scott Gediman, a Yosemite park spokesman.

“It’s summer in Yosemite,” Gediman said. “We have lots of international visitors. People have been planning their trips for months and years. But if people can make alternate plans they should consider that at this point.”

The fire jumped Highway 140 near El Portal on Friday afternoon and now is burning north toward Highway 120. If it keeps advancing and closes Highway 120 or Highway 41 in the south, Gediman said, that would leave only one road in and out of Yosemite Valley, a dangerous situation that he said could prompt officials to temporarily close the park for a few days, as they did in March for two days during flooding in Yosemite Valley.

On Monday afternoon, the fire was burning four miles from Yosemite’s Arch Rock entrance on Highway 140. It blackened steep terrain in the Stanislaus and Sierra national forests as temperatures neared 100 degrees. More than 3,000 firefighters battled the blaze, which was at 33,743 acres and only 13 percent contained.

Fire crews positioned engines around Yosemite View Lodge, Cedar Lodge — both of which were under mandatory evacuation — and other businesses near El Portal along Highway 140.

“I wish I could say it will be completely contained tomorrow, but I think we’ll be here for at least another week, maybe longer,” said Alex Olow, a spokesman for the Sierra National Forest.

In addition to 3,066 firefighters, there are 199 engines, 46 water tenders, 16 helicopters, 66 crews, and 43 bulldozers battling the blaze, which is the biggest fire around Yosemite since the massive Rim Fire burned 257,000 acres in 2013. Because of the remote terrain, with steep canyons and ridges in national forest land, no homes have burned, although some communities, including Yosemite West, are at risk.

One firefighter has died. Braden Varney, 36, a bulldozer operator for CalFire, died July 14 when his bulldozer rolled down a hill while he was cutting fire lines. Varney, a Mariposa resident who leaves behind a wife and two small children, was honored Monday at a ceremony in Modesto attended by firefighters from across California.

via Fire-choked Yosemite has dirtier air than Beijing

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China includes more cities in air pollution rankings to pressure local officials

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

China extended monthly air quality rankings to 169 cities from 74, including in the high-pollution region of Shanxi-Shaanxi in the country’s northwest, adding pressure on local authorities as it intensifies its campaign against air pollution.

Cities in the Fenwei plains area of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces, the Sichuan-Chongqing region and middle reaches of the Yangtze River were added to the previous rankings, which had focused mainly on 28 northern cities and provincial capitals known for their smog-filled skies.

“By including more cities in the ranking, it will strengthen public supervision on air pollution and urge local governments to adopt effective measures to improve air quality,” said the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) in a statement on Monday.

The country earlier this month expanded its anti-pollution fight to 82 cities across China in a long-awaited 2018-2020 pollution action plan published earlier this month.

The ranking system is part of an effort included in the anti-pollution action plan to pass pollution-control pressure over to local governments.

The MEE also said as part of the ranking that every month it will publish the 20 cities with the best air quality and the 20 cities with the worst pollution across the country.

Tangshan, top steelmaking city in Hebei province, was named as the worst place for air quality in the new list of 169 cities in June, according to the MEE. Coal-producing hub Linfen performed worst for the first half of the year.

Capital Beijing also appeared as one of the 20 worst offenders for air pollution in June, with its concentration of small particulate matter (PM2.5) jumping 14.3 percent from a year ago. This is the second month in a row for Beijing to be found as one of the nation’s most polluted cities.

On Friday, Tangshan started six weeks of production curbs at steel mills, coke producers and coal-fired power plants to deepen reductions in toxic emissions.

Average PM2.5 concentrations in 338 prefecture-level cities that are closely monitored by the central government were at 44 microgram per cubic meter in January-June this year, down 8.3 percent from same period last year but still above the national target of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.

via China includes more cities in air pollution rankings to pressure local officials – Business Insider

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Allergies: Mugwort pollen as main source of airborne endotoxins

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

A wide range of airborne substances can cause respiratory problems for asthma sufferers. These include bacteria and their components, which can trigger inflammations. How they become airborne has not been fully explained up to now. A science team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) has shown that pollen from the mugwort plant is the main vector for bacteria and that this combination renders the pollen more aggressive. This, however, is not the case in certain Alpine regions such as Davos.

Over a period of five years, the TUM team along with colleagues from CK-CARE (Christine Kühne — Center for Allergy Research and Education, Davos) took daily measurements of the air in Munich’s inner city and in the Alpine surrounds of Davos. Their two-fold task involved analyzing the different kinds of airborne plant pollen and measuring the concentration of endotoxins in the air. These chemical compounds, which are found on the surface of bacteria, can trigger inflammations in some people. Endotoxins are also released when bacteria die and disintegrate into their component parts.

Lower air pollution in Davos

When the scientists compared the pollen and bacterial constituents of the air in Munich with each other, they noticed a clear result: The volume of endotoxins in the air only ever increased if the pollen concentration of the mugwort plant also rose — regardless of climatic changes. Control measurements at the Alpine resort of Davos revealed significantly lower concentrations of pollen and endotoxins in the general air pollution. Even here, though, there was a clear correlation between mugwort pollen and the bacterial toxins.

Source of endotoxins identified

The two professors Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann and Jeroen Buters from TUM and HMGU oversaw the study. “We were able to demonstrate that the pollen acts as a ‘taxi’ for bacteria and thus also for their toxins. The pollen produced by mugwort, which is already aggressive enough, then becomes even more of a problem for allergy and asthma sufferers,” they explain.

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is widely distributed throughout Europe and can grow up to two meters of height. Its pollen has long been recognized as a trigger for hay fever. The team also studied the bacterial growth on mugwort plants to narrow down the endotoxin type on the pollen. They discovered just one species of bacteria as the main source of the endotoxins: Pseudomonas luteola, which was present on 95 percent of the plants.

Bacteria magnify allergic effects of pollen

The research team was then able to confirm its findings with the help of a complex allergy model. They demonstrated that mugwort pollen together with small amounts of endotoxins from the identified bacterium triggered strong signs of inflammation in the respiratory tract. The same severe effects were not observed with lower doses of the endotoxin or with the endotoxin respectively the pollen by themselves.

“In the future, we will be able to indirectly use the pollen count to forecast very high levels of airborne endotoxin pollution. This will provide a useful warning for allergy and asthma sufferers,” explains Jose Oteros, lead author of the study, which has been published in the “Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.”

via Allergies: Mugwort pollen as main source of airborne endotoxins — ScienceDaily

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US national parks have just as much air pollution as major cities

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

Study finds that the air in areas such as Yosemite National Park isn’t as pristine as it seems.

The air in US national parks contains just as much ozone pollution as the air in many of the country’s largest cities, according to a study1 published on 18 July in Science Advances.

The findings raise important health questions for people who visit the parks, says Ivan Rudik, an environmental economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a study co-author. That’s because exposure to ozone pollution can irritate the nose and throat, lead to chest pain or exacerbate conditions such as asthma2.

Ozone starts to form when nitrogen oxide gases — often emitted by cars — or particulates from coal-fired power plants combine with organic compounds given off by vegetation such as trees, Rudik explains. Sunlight reacts with this mixture to then produce ozone.

Rudik and his colleagues compared ozone levels in 33 national parks and in 20 of the largest US cities between 1990 and 2014. After controlling for weather and the season, the team found that pollution levels in the parks and cities were similar. In fact, before 2000, summer ozone levels in the parks increased before they started to drop. And even then, the decrease was modest when compared to the cities. The researchers aren’t sure what caused this pattern.

“That’s something I didn’t expect at all,” Rudik says. This is because an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1970 generally resulted in cleaner air across the US, he explains.

Although the US National Park Service has tracked ozone levels over national parks since 2008, they didn’t comment on the study’s findings.

via US national parks have just as much air pollution as major cities

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China’s ozone levels hit record high in June: Greenpeace

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

Concentrations of lung-damaging ozone hit a record high in China in June, rising 11 percent from the same month last year, environment group Greenpeace said on Wednesday, citing official data.

Despite China’s four-year battle against air pollution, ozone has become “an emerging health threat”, Greenpeace said. Average levels in the capital Beijing stood at 120 micrograms per cubic meter in June, around double the rates in ozone hotspots like California and Mexico City.

China’s environment ministry warned on Tuesday that it expected ozone pollution to be particularly high in the region surrounding Beijing over the next 10 days.

Ground-level ozone, known as “sunburn for the lungs”, is caused by the interaction of sunlight with nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic chemicals (VOCs).

It can lead to shortness of breath, coughing and inflamed airways, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Children are at the greatest risk and prolonged exposure may cause asthma and abnormal lung development.

“Likely reasons for surging ozone levels include stubbornly high nitrogen dioxide emissions from heavy industry and transport, and increasing VOC emissions from a wide range of industries from petroleum refining, plastics manufacturing and other chemical industries, construction, and from cars and trucks,” the Greenpeace report said.

Citing figures from the Global Burden of Disease database, Greenpeace said ozone exposure was responsible for about 70,000 premature deaths in China in 2016.

A study published by Peking University in April said ozone concentrations rose 40 percent or more in 10 northern Chinese cities from 2014 to 2017, despite tough new measures to clean up industry and traffic.

The study said China’s efforts to cut floating particulate matter had actually increased the strength of sunlight, creating more ozone.

Experts had urged China to target ozone pollution in its latest three-year anti-smog plan released last month, but no special measures were included.

Vice environment minister Zhao Yingmin said at a press briefing that while average ozone concentrations rose 8 percent last year, hazardous floating particles known as PM2.5 remained the country’s priority.

via China’s ozone levels hit record high in June: Greenpeace – Business Insider

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Wildfires are making extreme air pollution even worse in the northwest U.S.

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

Smoke from blazes ravaging western states is counteracting clean air improvements

The northwestern United States has become an air pollution hot spot — literally.

Air quality in states from Nevada to Montana is worse than it was 30 years ago on the days with the most extreme air pollution. Bigger and more frequent wildfires that spew plumes of fine particulate matter into the sky are largely to blame, researchers report July 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By contrast, the rest of the country has seen decreasing trends in similar smog and haze over the last three decades. Legislation such as the Clean Air Act, which mandates air quality standards and the regulation of vehicle and factory emissions of particulate matter, is making a difference, says study coauthor Daniel Jaffe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Bothell.

But the increase in lung-clogging particulate matter from wildfires shows how the effects of climate change — which is, in part, driving the worsening fires — can counteract those gains, Jaffe says.

Wildfire smoke is filled with fine particulates, minuscule solids or droplets that can be inhaled into the lungs, exacerbating breathing problems. Children, the elderly and people with asthma are most at risk, but communities near wildfires can temporarily experience levels of pollutants so high that it’s unsafe for anyone to be outside for very long. “When we start to think about people’s health, episodic events matter a lot,” says Gannet Hallar, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who wasn’t part of the study.

Regular exposure to elevated levels of these fine airborne pollutants (less than 2.5 micrometers wide, or about 3 percent of the width of a human hair) has also been linked to an increased risk of chronic health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes (SN: 9/30/17, p. 18).

Tracking the broader influence of wildfires on air pollution can be tricky because the fires are intermittent and patchy, says Jaffe, who carried out the study with Crystal McClure, also an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Bothell. “Most of the year, wildfires aren’t impacting air quality, but on some of the worst days they are.” And the blazes can hit one community hard, but leave neighboring towns relatively unaffected.

Jaffe and McClure looked at daily measurements of fine particulate matter at more than 100 rural monitoring sites around the country, from 1988 to 2016. In most parts of the country, the data showed a success story of cleaner air over time — but not in the northwest, an area that gets hit hard by wildfires every summer.

Where air pollution has gotten better or worse

This map shows the change from 1988 to 2016 in levels of fine particulate matter (smaller than 2.5 micrometers wide) on the days with the worst air. Over most of the country, this type of air pollution has decreased. But in the northwest, wildfires are making the bad air quality days worse than they used to be.

The team made similar calculations for levels of a few specific pollutants — particulate carbon, a hallmark of fire emissions, and sulfate, a by-product of burning fossil fuels. Particulate carbon levels had increased over time in the northwest, but sulfate levels didn’t, supporting the conclusion that wildfires are mainly driving the air pollution trend in the western United States, rather than industrial activity.

Wildfires weren’t making air pollution on an average day worse in the northwest, the team found. Most of the time, air quality is fine — wildfires might only affect a given community for a few days or weeks out of a year. But the air quality on the bad days, when air pollutants are especially high, is getting worse over time, the analysis shows. Those particularly bad days tended to be in the summer, when wildfires are at their peak. In the northwest, levels of fine particulates on the handful of days with the worst air quality each year have increased at an average rate of 0.21 micrograms per cubic meter per year, though there’s substantial local variability in that number.

As the overall air quality picture in the country has improved, we now have harder work to do, says Jenny Hand, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who wasn’t part of the study. Those challenges include figuring out how to prevent and mitigate these more uncontrollable sources of air pollution that can’t be regulated like emissions from human sources can, she says.

via Wildfires are making extreme air pollution even worse in the northwest U.S. | Science News

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Australian cities see higher death toll from worsening air pollution

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution in Australia’s major cities will worsen, in turn causing more premature deaths, according to a latest Australian-linked research on Monday (July 16).

More than 3,000 premature deaths in the country every year are related to urban air pollution and the figure could rise due to changing weather conditions, local media cited Australian researcher Jason Evans, a co-author of the findings published in the Climate Dynamics journal, as saying on Monday.

Evans and his team analysed two decades of weather data covering nine weather sites across southeastern Australia, including major cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

With more than 80 per cent of Australia’s population living in the south-eastern areas and large population growth expected, “the impact of more intense air pollution events in the future could be substantial,” they said.

Their study looked at the impact of global warming on temperature inversions, especially near surface temperature inversions, which can amplify air pollution by preventing convective movements and trapping pollutants close to the ground, thus increasing health issues.

Air temperature normally decreases with altitude but the inversion can trap cool air near the surface under warm air, building up harmful pollutants.

The researchers reported that there is a substantial increase in the strength of near surface temperature inversions over south-east Australia, which suggests that future inversions may intensify poor air quality events.

via Australian cities see higher death toll from worsening air pollution, Australia/NZ News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

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Expansion of Odd-Even Policy Reduces Air Pollution in Jakarta

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Respro® UK Ltd

Head of Jakarta Environment Department Isnawa Adji claimed the air quality in Jakarta has improved after the expansion of odd-even policy since July 2.

“In general, all parameters of air quality in Jakarta are still below the quality standard. But with this odd-even policy, the pollutants sourced from motor vehicles are decreasing,” Isnawa said in a written statement on Wednesday, July 11.

The decreasing pollutant levels in Jakarta during the expansion of odd-even policy are the gas concentration of CO, NO, and HC.

Isnawa’s claim is based on the results of air quality monitoring at several air stations at a number of points. As in DKI 1 Station Hotel Indonesia roundabout, the CO concentration was at 1.7 percent, the NO decreased by 14.7 percent, and the HC decreased by 1.37 percent.

In addition, at DKI 2 Station Kelapa Gading, there has been a decrease of CO concentration of 1.15 percent, NO concentration decreased 7.03 percent, and NO2 decreased by 2.01 percent. Meanwhile, at DKI 4 Station Lubang Buaya, CO concentration decreased by 1.12 percent and the NO decreased by 7.46 percent.

However, the air quality parameters of PM-10 or the dust air particles smaller than 10 microns are still quite high. This, Isnawa said, was caused by the development activities of MRT, LRT, and the arrangement of sidewalks on Jalan Sudirman-Thamrin.

“These projects are certain to be completed or suspended during the Asian Games, so it certainly will not be a problem,” Isnawa said.

As of July 2 to July 31, the odd-even policy trials began to be widened to several areas in Jakarta, such as on Jalan Rasuna Said, M.T. Haryono, D.I. Panjaitan, A. Yani, Benyamin Sueb, Gatot Subroto, and Metro Pondok Indah.

The time of the odd-even policy trial starts at 06:00 am to 09:00 pm or 15 hours. For the odd-numbered vehicles can cross on the road on the odd dates only, as well as for the even-numbered vehicles.

via Expansion of Odd-Even Policy Reduces Air Pollution in Jakarta | Metro | Tempo.Co :: Indonesian News Portal

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