Printed in the Family Post: School Issue 2006

By Jeff Kane

I’m a healthy guy, so I was surprised when I became asthmatic last summer. Suddenly dependent on inhalers, heavy meds, and a lounge chair, I had only enough energy to wonder about the source of my illness. Allergy? Genes? Stress? Something in the air? A friend suggested that I check out the webpage www.sparetheair.com. There I learned that the two principal air pollutants in Nevada County are particulates—basically smoke from winter heating fires—and, from May to October, ozone.

Some days last summer, breathing felt good. Other days were a blur of wheezing and coughing. Checking in with sparetheair.com’s daily ozone report, I discovered that my good days correlated with low ozone, and my miserable ones occurred when ozone was high. Just by waking up and inhaling, I could tell you within ten points what the ozone score was.

Ozone is toxic in concentrations as tiny as one molecule in a million air molecules. Unlike particulates, ozone is invisible, so breathing is the only way we non-technicians can detect it. On a clear day the ozone score might be 30, in the “healthy” range, or it could be 180, “unhealthy.” What looks like pristine foothills air isn’t necessarily pristine. Several families have told me they’d moved here seeking refuge from clotted city air, and instead inexplicably developed lung disorders. They were unaware that the American Lung Association rates Nevada County’s ozone pollution twelfth worst in the United States.
When inhaled over years, ozone damages lungs, which then suffer reduced respiratory capacity and weakened defense against foreign particles, bacteria, and other irritants. Ozone’s especially toxic to pregnant women, outdoor workers, the elderly, athletes, and those with pre-existing heart or lung disease or compromised immunity, as from steroids or chemotherapy.

Ozone is uniquely hazardous to kids. The 1992 Children’s Health Study by the University of Southern California School of Medicine concluded that ozone hampers lung growth in children from ten to eighteen. At the age of eighteen, kids raised in high-ozone areas show measurably weaker lung function. Child athletes are doubly at risk, such that some school districts curtail sports activities on “bad air” days.

By the way, it’s important to distinguish between two separate ozone issues. The more notorious one is the depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere, where it normally works to our benefit. I’m talking here, though, about the ozone at ground level, where it’s a toxic product of internal combustion engines. Motor vehicles emit oxides of nitrogen, which sunlight helps convert into ozone. Put simply, the ozone we breathe results almost totally from car and truck exhaust.

If that’s the case, then, why don’t we just drive less in Nevada County? Because—and here’s the catch—the bulk of our ozone isn’t produced here. Air currents

transport it from San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Valley, and it pools here for us to inhale. Since we essentially reside in Sacramento’s tailpipe, anything we could do locally to limit ozone would only minimally affect its concentration.

So what can we do? We can support the pollution-control efforts of the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District (phone: 274-9360), the California Air Resources Board, and the United States E.P.A. We can express concern to our legislators, from the county on up. We can sue Sacramento and Bay Area counties to require stricter emission standards.

And we can — indeed, must — think differently about motor vehicles. Not only do they poison our air, but their fuel is increasingly scarce. As global demand for oil rises, we’ll have to decide whether it’s worth fighting other nations for the dregs. Cheap oil has permeated our society so thoroughly during the past century that kicking the habit will mean radical change in everything from social patterns to food access. If we’re to adapt, we’ll need sustainable, nonpolluting energy sources, and we’ll need to conserve as never before. We’ll walk more, carpool, bike, telecommute, and we’ll develop effective public mass transit.

I’ve learned in my forty years of doctoring that illness isn’t always totally tragic. It’s no picnic, but it can be a wakeup call. Asthma’s taught me that if I have to make the choice, I’d much rather breathe than drive.