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The relatively poor air quality over the past week or two is mostly due to recent meteorology conditions. The persistent high pressure over California right now leads to cooler temperatures, a low inversion layer, light winds (no storms), and poor vertical mixing. This meteorology pattern traps our area’s emissions within the area and closer to the ground, leading to higher measured concentrations. Hopefully this will ease up a bit later this week.

I have passed along the information that the AirNow site is listing “Fairfield” on the Current AQI and AQI Loop of the “NowCast” values (as in the screenshot below). However, even though the header says Fairfield, the measured AQI listed on the AirNow page is not specific to any given monitor. The map and current AQI listed is the highest AQI measured for that hour at any site in the reporting zone for the zip code that is entered. There are five reporting zones in the Bay Area – and they are shown on the map here: http://www.baaqmd.gov/about-air-quality/current-air-quality and described here http://www.sparetheair.org/stay-informed/todays-air-quality/reporting-zones. Vallejo is in the Northern Zone, so for our AQI forecasts and AirNow current AQI, it is reflecting the maximum AQI in that whole area for a given day or hour.

I think a better site to track real-time measured concentrations at a specific Air District-operated monitor is the query page for the CARB AQMIS database located at https://www.arb.ca.gov/aqmis2/aqdselect.php. You can select filters to look at PM2.5 daily averages and our area by selecting the Air Basin to be “San Francisco Bay Area”. The “Daily Data” tab shows the 24-hour averages at each site for a week (week at a glance) or the max 24-hour value for each day in the whole Bay Area for the entire year (year at a glance). The “Hourly Data” tab gives a table of hourly values for the given day at each site.

A new global alliance promoting the voluntary adoption of an independent on-road vehicle emissions test and rating system.

http://www.allowair.org/

Urban particulate air pollution is a serious health issue. Trees within cities can remove fine particles from the atmosphere and consequently improve air quality and human health. Tree effects on PM2.5 concentrations and human health are modeled for 10 U.S. cities. The total amount of PM2.5 removed annually by trees varied from 4.7 tonnes in Syracuse to 64.5 tonnes in Atlanta, with annual values varying from $1.1 million in Syracuse to $60.1 million in New York City. Most of these values were from the effects of reducing human mortality. Mortality reductions were typically around 1 person yr-1 per city, but were as high as 7.6 people yr-1 in New York City. Average annual percent air quality improvement ranged be- tween 0.05% in San Francisco and 0.24% in Atlanta. Understanding the impact of urban trees on air quality can lead to improved urban forest management strategies to sustain human health in cities.

See here https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/43676

http://www.mareislandmurder.com/

see this link:

https://cchealth.org/hazmat/accident-history.php

Details in

http://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/Files/Planning%20and%20Research/CARE%20Program/Documents/ImpactCommunities_2_Methodology.ashx?la=en

In the US, exposure to very fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 is considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s national ambient air quality standards so long as a person breathes in an average of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air (μg/m3) or less per day over the duration of a year. In the short term, the US considers it safe if PM2.5 levels don’t go over 35 μg/m3 within a day, so long as the yearly average comes out to 12 μg/m3 per day (in other words, a few days of higher PM2.5 here and there is acceptable, so long as there are only a few).

The “safe” levels laid out by national health agencies everywhere are inherently far from safe. “Any level of air pollution, no matter how low, is harmful to human health”

For more details, follow the link.

West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP)  http://www.woeip.org/

Coalition for Clean Air   http://www.ccair.org/

Family for Clean Air   http://www.familiesforcleanair.org/

Sunflower Alliance  https://www.sunflower-alliance.org/

Communities for a better environment   www.cbecal.org/

350 Bay area  https://350bayarea.org/

Map Web Service: Real-time Air Quality Tile API

http://aqicn.org/faq/2015-09-18/map-web-service-real-time-air-quality-tile-api/cn/

From International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Abstract
Air pollution of anthropogenic origin is largely from the combustion of biomass (e.g., wood), fossil fuels (e.g., cars and trucks), incinerators, landfills, agricultural activities and tobacco smoke. Air pollution is a complex mixture that varies in space and time, and contains hundreds of compounds including volatile organic compounds (e.g., benzene), metals, sulphur and nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulate matter (PM). PM0.1 (ultrafine particles (UFP)), those particles with a diameter less than 100 nm (includes nanoparticles (NP)) are considered especially dangerous to human health and may contribute significantly to the development of numerous respiratory and cardiovascular diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and atherosclerosis. Some of the pathogenic mechanisms through which PM0.1 may contribute to chronic disease is their ability to induce inflammation, oxidative stress and cell death by molecular mechanisms that include transcription factors such as nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) and nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 (Nrf2). Epigenetic mechanisms including non-coding RNA (ncRNA) may also contribute towards the development of chronic disease associated with exposure to PM0.1. This paper highlights emerging molecular concepts associated with inhalational exposure to PM0.1 and their ability to contribute to chronic respiratory and systemic disease.

To Read full article: follow this link.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343780/