Air Quality Facts

Air Pollution Is Not Regional:

The pollution that we create in Santa Monica is transported inland by ocean breezes.

20% of the air pollution found in the Grand Canyon can be traced back to the South Coast Air Basin (in which Santa Monica is located).

"Transport" smog from the South Coast Air Basin was responsible for 50% of the days when San Diego exceeded federal air quality standards in 1997.

Trees as far north as Yosemite are dying due to smog from the South Coast Air Basin which is weakening them and making them more susceptible to pests, disease and drought.

Water in Yosemite is also highly acidic from air pollution that has accumulated in the atmosphere and falls to the ground in the form of acid rain or snow.


Real Dangers:

More children now than ever before are being diagnosed with asthma. Regions with the worst air pollution have more diagnosis per capita than areas with cleaner air.

The American Lung Association estimates that the annual cost of air pollution in terms of medical care because of illness and premature death has reached the level of more than $60 billion.

Research shows a correlation between air pollution and respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancer and a weakened immune system.

Children are especially at risk of developing respiratory problems because of developing lungs. For their body size, they inhale several more times than adults, and they tend to spend more time playing outdoors.

Smog interferes with the functioning of lungs and lowers the body’s resistance to infectious diseases.

Children growing up in the South Coast Air Basin have a 15% reduction in lung capacity and 8 out of 10 children in the South Coast Air Basin have lung abnormalities.

A ten-year UCLA study shows that breathing dirty air causes premature aging of healthy lungs and may even trigger cancer. Each time the lungs are damaged by pollutants they repair themselves, but they do it less perfectly with each successive bout, making you more susceptible to the next virus that comes along.

Southern California's Environment:

The Los Angeles area has more smog than Houston, Denver, Pittsburgh, Chicago and New York City combined. In fact, we have the worst air quality in North America.

70% of smog in Southern California comes from motor vehicle emissions (cars and trucks). In the South Coast Air Basin, 90% of employees commute to work by car.

In Los Angeles, two-thirds of all urban space serves as a parking lot or thoroughfare for cars.

While the state's population grows two percent a year, the number of miles driven grows five percent per year.

The South Coast Air Basin (which consists of L.A., Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties) are 13,350 square miles with 14 million residents. If it was a state, it would be the third most populous in the nation, behind New York and Texas, and the most polluted.

With 12 million motor vehicles, the South Coast Air Basin is the world’s largest consumer of gasoline and diesel fuels, a major source of the region’s air pollution.

The Effects of Driving in Southern California:

Cars give off 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) for every gallon of gas consumed. The lower the miles per gallon (MPG) for a vehicle, the higher the CO2 emissions.

Cars emit nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons that create acid rain and ozone in quantities directly related to the amount of fuel consumed.

The average car pumps it's own weight in carbon emissions into the atmosphere each year.

Each year, an estimate 1,600 Southland residents, most with heart or respiratory illness, die prematurely from air pollution.

Healthy Southern California residents suffer short-term eye and throat irritation and must curtail recreational and athletic activities, especially outdoors.

California drivers waste 1.2 billion hours stuck in traffic each year -- an amount equal to $16 billion in lost productivity.

If only 100,000 car owners who'd neglected to have their cars tuned up didn't, 90 million pounds of CO2 could be kept out of the atmosphere yearly.

Women living in the South Coast Air Basin have a 37% greater chance of contracting all cancers because of particle pollution. Researchers aren't exactly sure why men have less risk than women.

Men and women living in the South Coast Basin have more than twice the risk of contracting lung cancer and respiratory diseases such as asthma, bronchitis and chronic lung disease because of ozone pollution (smog).

Trees in California forests are dying prematurely by a disease caused smog. This disease has been given two names, California X Disease or Needle Dieback. First noticed in Los Angeles area forests in 1955, the disease kills trees from the bottom up and the inside out, unlike drought or pests.

Be Aware of the Quality of Air You Breathe

For daily information on air quality for Santa Monica and other areas in the South Coast Air Basin, you can call the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s 24 hour hotline at: 1-800-242-4022.

Do Your Part -- Rideshare

For information on carpools, vanpools, trains, buses, walking or biking, call Metro Rideshare at 1-800-COMMUTE.