| Air Quality Alert!
(True or False?)
Monday, July 28, 2003 -- You don't want to walk around with a Hershey bar in your pocket, today. It's summer inversion time and day by day working toward one hundred degrees.
OMED: The first thing you should understand about what you've just read is that it is a prediction. Just like the weather report you hear on the radio, see on television or read in the newspaper. And, just like them, it is not always correct. I was listening to KPAM (860 AM) in the afternoon. Victor Boc's talk show. He said, "We have another bogus clean air action day." Victor has apparently been following this process for some time He reported that the air-quality index in the Portland area hovered at 19 all day until, at 5:00 P.M., it went up to 34. Curious, I contacted the DEQ and asked about this. I soon had an information officer, a quite pleasant and well-spoken young woman, on the line. Projections, not current measurements If I understood the explanation I received, here is how this works. She said, " ... federal health standards are based on an eight hour time span. Our air quality index is presented only twice a day. It's really good for yesterday, not today." These days, industry isn't much of an air pollution problem. The smoke-belching industrial chimneys are pretty much a things of the past. The bulk of the claimed air pollution problem, if and when one exists, comes, she explained, from engines which burn petroleum in one form or another. Cars, chainsaws, bulldozers, boats, motorcycles, lawnmowers. Gas engines, mostly. The byproducts (exhaust) of these devices contain carbon monoxide, or C0. (We exhale carbon dioxide, or C02, when we breathe.) C0, it seems, when floating around on a hot day, exposed to the sun, changes into 03, which chemists call 'ozone.' (If you use the AQI link, below, you will see two items which seem to run counter to this information. Ozone and Carbon Monoxide are listed separately. Perhaps I misunderstood her, here. More serious in today's index breakdown is the fact that the heavy pollution is listed as coming from "south of Portland," not within the immediate metro area. So, the numbers you will see below, while not large enough to generate a bad air warning based on the DEQ's own definition, additonally don't even relate to the heavy traffic areas news reports indicate. Hot weather and traffic didn't do anything to anybody, today.. My guess is that smoke from a forest fire was the culprit. Whatever the cause, this adds up to an incorrect report which suggests threats to health that (by their own rating system) didn't exist, and if they had, wouldn't have existed in the place everyone was led to believe they existed. Sounds like a government operation to me, alright.) If 03, because of local weather conditions (lack of wind, geographic focusing into land depressions like valleys) does manage to reach a certain level of concentration, it becomes hazardous to some people's health. People with chronic respiratory conditions can suffer. According to the DEQ source with whom I spoke, about 8% of Oregonians have conditions that put them in a risk group related to air-quality problems. Quite obviously, the remaining 92% of Oregonians should curtail some activities temporarily if those actions are causing breathing difficulty for that 8%. The question, of course, is: how do we know when to do it? Science and bureacracy do not mix I don't know how you did in highschool chemistry, but my only notable accomplishment in that arena was a demonstration of rapid oxidation when, at the end of the term, I set my lab manual on fire. So, when the DEQ tells 92% of Oregonians in the Portland area to park their cars, motorcycles and lawnmowers, and commute on light rail, by bus or carpool groups, we're at their mercy While speaking with the DEQ representative, I said the following: "Is Victor Boc right or wrong? He says that over an extended span of these air quality events he has checked the numbers, and not one single time have your warnings been correct. Using your own organization's scale, not once after an air pollution alert has been issued has the air pollution index reached the lowest dangerous level you have. Do you compare your warnings with actual data -- the measurements of air quality during the time in question? If you issue an air quality warning on Tuesday, do you look over the actual measurements on Wednesday to see if your predictions came true?" She said that one person she knew had been keeping a log on this subject for a year or more. This statement may with some degree of confidence be translated as: "We do not officially check the accuracy of our alerts. It is not a requirement of this division's normal functions." My first thought was probably your first thought, here. When a government agency announces an "urgent pollution prevention message" which is supposed to cause 92% of Oregonians to alter their daily lives, shouldn't care be taken to be sure that such warnings are of the highest scientific veracity possible? And, since these warnings are issued based on predictive, not currently measured, premises, doesn't it make sense to see if the predictions are generally accurate? Wouldn't that be the best way to be sure that the best possible methods are being utilized? To not make an effort to determine if these predictions are accurate is to treat the lives this agency is affecting with an arrogant disregard similar to the local media, which as of the late local news was still promoting this highly questionable "urgent pollution prevention message." Summing up Someone believes that 8% of Oregonians have breathing problems, and that automobiles and other gasoline-powered devices give off a gas that when exposed to the sun becomes a chemical that negatively affects that 8%. Science comfirms the exhaust part of that story, and some organization left un-named provides the health numbers. The meteorologists say that summer inversion conditions will exist, the DEQ applies their usual predictive formula and the media picks up the text and passes it along to the public without stopping for a moment to wonder if there's any truth to it, at all. What we know for sure is that on July 28, 2003, the DEQ issued a smog (air quality) alert for the Portland area, and that using the DEQ and EPA's own scales, the alert was a bad call. The highest AQI (Air Quality Index) number of the day was 78, which is 22 basis points below the category designated as "unhealthy for sensitive groups."
Victor Boc, who says he has watched this happen time and time again, was absolutely correct, today. If he is correct about the rest, then this young woman and her DEQ, along with the media clones who serve the same interests, have been meddling in the lives of Oregonians for years, with no valid reason for doing it. And, not one of them has ever bothered to see if what they were doing had any basis in fact, at all. In the case of the government agency, you are forced to pay them to do it, while the mainstream media misinforms you for free. There was no "urgent pollution prevention message" needed, today, no matter what Chicken Little and the media dodos said. We may be stuck with the DEQ, but we can do something about those overzealous environmentalist bureaucrats who without cause mess with your daily life. We could ask the Senate to add a rider to the upcoming prescription drug bill, and so provide free tranquilizers for the atmosphericallly neurotic (LL). © 2003 Oregon Magazine |
