The Brief

Gross black dust on your windowsill. Sickly yellow haze that obscures the mountains. Childhood memories of recess cancelled due to smog alerts.

You know the air here is dirty. Now learn why.

Once Upon A Time

The L.A. smog story goes a little like this: on July 8, 1943, a mysterious haze descended on the city.

"People were having car accidents," Chip Jacobs, co-author of Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, told LAist. "Mothers were wondering why their kids' eyes were watering. Police officers were spinning loopy."

What was this strange haze? Was it a gas attack? Smoke from factories? From some distant fire?

To solve the mystery, local officials formed the nation's first air quality regulator, the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District. They began looking into the problem and quickly learned that there were a lot of sources of air pollution in greater L.A.: people burning trash in their backyards, oil refineries, smudge pots (which are small, smoky fires used by citrus growers to keep trees warm at night), and factories.

But soon, a Caltech scientist figured out that cars and gasoline were largely to blame for the eye-watering, lung-searing haze.

A smog-shrouded view of downtown Los Angeles on October 7, 1968.

(

Los Angeles Public Library archive

)

What Do Cars Have To Do With It?

Car exhaust has two main components: hydrocarbons, from the gasoline, and nitrogen oxides, which are formed inside hot, internal combustion engines. Both are harmful in and of themselves, but when they float into the sunny, Southern California air, the sunlight bakes them into a new chemical: ozone, also known as smog.

Once scientists figured out what caused smog, the crackdown began: in 1967, a new state air quality agency, the Air Resources Board, was formed. It enacted tailpipe emissions standards for cars. It required catalytic converters on new models, cleaner gasoline and, at the gas pump, those little rubber boots that trap fumes from the nozzle. In 1984, smog checks began statewide. Other industries had to clean up, too: oil refineries, cement plants, power plants. And as California cleaned up its air, other states and the federal government followed.

L.A. has the worst ozone, or smog, in the country, according to the American Lung Association's 2021 State of the Air Report.

(

American Lung Association

)

Bad Now Vs. Bad Then

The air is a lot cleaner now. In 2020 , we had 157 days of unhealthy air, compared to well over 200 in the late 1980s. However, 2020 tracked the highest number of unhealthy air days since 1997, even with pandemic restrictions seeing a drop in auto travel. So when it's smoggy, it's not as smoggy as it used to be.

But Los Angeles still has the worst smog in the country, according to the American Lung Association's 2021 State of the Air report. (Again, scientists call smog "ozone." But they're the same thing).

Greater L.A. exceeded federal air quality standards for 157 days in 2020.

(

South Coast Air Quality Management District

)

Part of the problem is that it's been hot, incredibly hot. And heat speeds up the process of ozone-formation. Experts are trying to figure out whether the spate of bad air is a new trend, reversing years of steady progress.

"Is this weather, or has this become climate?" said Atwood. "We're grappling with that question basically."

What Makes Our Smog So Special?

Three reasons.

• One, there are a lot of us, and we own a lot of cars. Angelenos own 0.54 vehicles per person, compared to 0.43 in New York City. Also, we have the busiest ports in the country, which means tens of thousands of heavy-duty diesel trucks are on our roads, and they are way dirtier than cars.
• Two, the mountains that ring the L.A. Basin trap that pollution as it gets pushed eastwards by sea breezes.
• And three, our climate. Nearly three out of four days in L.A. are sunny. And the L.A. Basin frequently experiences a weather pattern where a layer of warm air will sit on top of a layer of cooler air and prevent it from dispersing. That traps pollution closer to the ground. Think of it like putting a lid on a pot.

Where's The Dirtiest Air? Where's The Cleanest?

Because the wind blows smog east, towards the mountains, the air is worst there. So places like Redlands, San Bernardino and even the tiny, mountain community of Crestline have far worse air quality than coastal cities like Long Beach or Santa Monica.

But there's another factor to consider besides smog: the raw vehicle emissions that combine to make smog can also have localized health impacts. So if you live within 500 feet of a busy road or a freeway, you're in a pollution hot spot, because that's where vehicle emissions are the most concentrated. (Use this handy map made by our friends at the LA Times to figure out how close you live to a freeway.)

Trucks on the SR 60 Freeway drive by Anna Gallegos' backyard in Mira Loma Village, California.

(

Andrew Cullen for LAist

)

In the very worst places to live, like near a freeway in San Bernardino, you will be exposed to both smog and raw vehicle emissions, said Ed Avol, the head of the Environmental Health Division at the USC Keck School of Medicine.

"It's sort of like a double whammy, so you get both the local impact of being near a roadway, and you also get the accrued accumulation of pollution that's become a regional issue," he said in an interview with KPCC/LAist in April.

What Will Breathing Dirty Air Do To Me?

When you breathe in dirty air, it triggers an inflammatory response in your body. And once that happens, a lot of bad things can happen. In the short term, air pollution can cause:

• Difficulty breathing and chest pain.
• Increased rates of asthma.
• Respiratory diseases like bronchitis and pneumonia.
• Lost school or work days.
• Doctor and hospital visits.
  

Over the long term, it's much worse. Kids who grow up breathing dirty air, whether it's from living near a freeway or in a smoggy area, or both, have weaker lungs that don't work as well.

"If they never get that maximum lung growth early in life, it looks like it's permanently lost," Avol said.

For older adults, air pollution can contribute to cognitive decline, memory loss and premature death. It can also exacerbate heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cause cancer. There's even research suggesting fetuses are harmed when their moms breathe dirty air.

"In a cynical, joking way, you could say we believe air pollution causes everything," Avol said.

Smog-making cars on March 22, 2006 in L.A.

(

David McNew/Getty Images

)

How Can I Protect Myself And My Family From Bad Air?

One of the most common ways people are exposed to pollution is while driving. So when you're on the freeway, be sure to keep your windows rolled up and re-circulate the air, instead of drawing it in from the outside. Changing your air filter also helps. And new cars are more tightly sealed than older cars, keeping pollution out.

If you can, try to live at least 500 away from a freeway or busy road. If you can't, using HEPA air filters has been shown to significantly reduce indoor air pollution when the air outside is dirty. Clean that black dust, which is a combination of diesel soot and rubber dust from tire wear, off your window sills.

Outside of the home, try to walk or bike on less busy streets, to limit your exposure to vehicle exhaust. When waiting for the bus, stand back from the street corner, where pollution levels soar when vehicles accelerate from a stop. And don't exercise near busy roads during rush hour, especially in the morning, or when the air is especially bad.

You can also check the air quality every day. This South Coast Air Quality Management District map will give you a good overview of air in your area. You can also check the Purple Air network, which measures particulate matter (like soot, dust and wildfire smoke), or have a low-cost air monitor installed at your home or work.

What Do We Need To Do To Make The Air Actually Clean?

It all comes down to transportation. Cars and trucks make up nearly 90 percent of the smog-forming pollution in Southern California (not to mention they are also the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the state), and it's because they run on gasoline and diesel.

Switching to fuels with zero tailpipe emissions, like electricity and hydrogen fuel-cells, will make a huge difference, says Will Barrett, the clean air advocacy director for the American Lung Association.

Trucks drive along Interstate 80 on February 18, 2014 in Berkeley, California.

(

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

)

"We need to see more focus and urgency on the conversion of the heavy duty sector to zero emission technology," he said.

But heavy duty trucks have proven tricky, so far, to electrify, because they would require a massive battery to power them over long distances while carrying heavy loads. Also, truckers would need frequent, convenient charging stations, and that infrastructure doesn't exist yet.

California regulators, ever the clean-air optimists, are throwing cash at the program. The ports of L.A. and Long Beach, for example, have a goal of shifting their entire fleet of largely diesel trucks and equipment to zero emissions technology by 2035 -- at a cost of $14 billion. If they can figure it out, all of our lungs will benefit.

This story is part of Elemental: Covering Sustainability, a multimedia collaboration between Cronkite News, Arizona PBS, KJZZ, KPCC, Rocky Mountain PBS and PBS SoCal.

The suspended leader of the Los Angeles Unified School District says he acted lawfully and has asked to be restored to his position.

Through a law firm, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho this week issued his first public statement since federal agents searched his home in San Pedro and his office at LAUSD's downtown headquarters on February 25.

The reason for the searches is unknown. A Department of Justice spokesperson said the agency has a court-authorized warrant, but declined to provide additional details. The FBI told our media partner CBS LA that the underlying affidavit remained under court-ordered seal.

How the district responded

Two days after the search, the LAUSD board voted unanimously to place Carvalho on paid administrative leave “pending investigation,” and appointed longtime administrator Andres Chait as acting superintendent.

Carvalho’s statement states that while the investigation is ongoing, there has been no evidence presented showing he violated federal law.

“Mr. Carvalho respects the rule of law and the investigative process and has always acted in the best interests of students and within the bounds of the law,” the statement from Holland & Knight LLP states.

“Mr. Carvalho remains confident that the evidence will ultimately demonstrate that he acted appropriately and in the best interests of students. We hope the School Board reinstates him promptly to his position as superintendent.”

In response to LAist’s questions about Carvalho’s desire to be reinstated, an LAUSD spokesperson wrote, “The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education respects his right to defend himself.”

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced member nations would release a total of 400 million barrels from their strategic reserves of oil as the war in Iran continues to cause the worst disruption to energy markets in decades.

The unanimous decision by the members of the IEA, which represents some of the world's biggest oil-consuming nations, is meant to address the acute disruption in oil trade caused by the war. It's the largest release of crude oil the IEA has ever coordinated, and only the sixth time the group has released oil to balance crude markets.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said on Wednesday that the decision by IEA members, who together control some 1.8 billion barrels of stockpiled oil, is a "major action" meant to alleviate the disruption of oil markets.

"But to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

Details about the timing and the amounts of oil each country will contribute have not yet been announced.

Global oil prices, which have been highly volatile for days, dropped below $87 on Tuesday night, after The Wall Street Journal first reported about the pending IEA recommendation, but were hovering just under $90 after Birol spoke on Wednesday morning. That price had been around $70 before the war began, spiked to nearly $120 late Sunday night, and fell to around $90 in recent days.

The IEA was formed in the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s. It serves as a sort of counterpart to OPEC, the group of oil-producing nations that work together to coordinate production. While OPEC represents the interests of oil producers, the IEA was established to protect the interests of oil consumers. It coordinates national stockpiles to create a buffer in the case of an extreme shock to global oil supplies — precisely like the one the world is experiencing today.

The group has 32 member countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan, Korea and most nations in Europe. More than a dozen countries are affiliated with the IEA as "association countries," including China, India, Thailand and Kenya. All together, the IEA estimates that its countries account for 80% of global energy demand.

A requirement for membership in the IEA is that countries must commit to maintaining substantial reserves of crude oil or distilled petroleum products, enough to cover at least 90 days of that country's exports, as well as undertake programs to reduce dependency on oil.

Today, some members of the IEA — including the U.S. — are net oil exporters, producing more oil than they need. That means under IEA rules they aren't required to keep stockpiles. But the U.S., which is both the world's largest consumer of oil and the world's largest producer, still maintains the world's largest known stockpile.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) were last tapped in 2022, during the most recent IEA-coordinated release of oil, in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was only the fourth time the SPR had ever been tapped.

Both the Biden administration and then the Trump administration have signaled plans to refill the SPR, but officials have reported that damage to the underground salt caverns that hold the oil has slowed down those efforts.

Currently, the U.S. SPR has about 415 million barrels, out of a total capacity of 715 million barrels.

Oil markets in crisis 

Oil prices have swung wildly over the past week, as ship traffic came to a near-standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which approximately 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas typically travels. Iran's closure of the strait is blocking millions of barrels of oil per day from reaching markets.

And it's having knock-on effects; countries like Iraq and Kuwait have had to stop producing oil in some fields because with storage tanks full and no ability to send ships through the strait, there is simply nowhere to put the oil.

Some oil is being redirected, including through a pipeline Saudi Arabia can use to send oil to the Red Sea for export. The U.S. has waived sanctions on Russian crude to ease pressure on markets. Now, IEA members are also helping rebalance markets by tapping their stockpiles

However, the oil in those stockpiles cannot all be pulled out immediately; there is a physical limit on how quickly it can flow. And oil analysts agree that, as Birol acknowledged, that all the world's responses put together cannot fully compensate for the disruption created by the Iran war.

"There is simply no substitute for restoring access through the Strait of Hormuz," Angie Gildea, the global oil and gas leader for accounting giant KPMG, told NPR in a statement sent by email earlier this week. "The tools at our disposal, including strategic reserves, rerouting some exports and floating inventories, can provide some relief at the margins, but they are not structural solutions."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Orange County has filed a lawsuit accusing its main mental health partner, Mind OC, of squandering more than $60 million in public funds.

Specifically, the county says the nonprofit group, commonly known as Be Well OC:

• Fraudulently billed millions for services it didn’t provide.
• Jacked up rental rates for county-funded behavioral health providers. 
• Routinely put its own financial interests ahead of the vulnerable populations it was supposed to protect.

Why it matters

The allegations came Tuesday in a cross-complaint filed against Mind OC in a bitter legal dispute over what was supposed to be a model public-private mental health campus in the city of Orange.

LAist reached out to Mind OC for a response. A representative said they were not surprised by the lawsuit, and were reviewing it carefully. They also called the county’s counter-complaint “reactionary,” and said it was the county who breached its agreement with Mind OC at the Orange health campus, causing the nonprofit “significant damages.”

In all, the county is seeking the return of up to $64.5 million in public funds and property it says it entrusted to the organization, according to the complaint. The county also wants to wrest control of the Orange campus from the nonprofit.

The background

Mind OC, which does business as Be Well OC, was launched in 2017 with the goal of creating a world class mental health system in Orange County, including two campuses where, they hoped, patients using public services and those with private insurance would both seek care.

The Be Well OC initiative had strong support from the O.C. Board of Supervisors, including disgraced former Supervisor Andrew Do, who was a member of the board's ad hoc committee on mental health services at the time.

The first campus opened in Orange in 2021. The initial agreement between Mind OC and the county called for granting the organization a 60-year lease for $1 per year in exchange for Mind OC designing and overseeing construction of the mental health campus in Orange. (The actual cost of construction was covered by the county, private hospitals, and the county’s Medi-Cal provider, CalOptima.)

But the relationship soon soured. The county claimed in 2024 that Mind OC was in default, and then canceled the organization’s lease in February 2025. In the middle of the two actions, Mind OC sued.

A second Be Well OC campus was scheduled to open in Irvine last year, but has been held up, largely stemming from the disputes between Mind OC and the county.

On Tuesday afternoon, just hours after the county filed its complaint, Irvine held a special meeting where the City Council voted 5 to 2 to support the immediate opening of the Irvine Be Well campus — with Mind OC as the operator.

The nonprofit took in $50 million in revenue last year from providing mental health services in Orange County, and has $182 million in assets, according to its latest tax filing.

The legal allegations

Here are some of the major allegations in the county’s complaint:

The county alleges that Mind OC fraudulently billed the county $7.4 million for services it didn’t fully deliver. 

The county gave Mind OC a $7.7 million no-bid contract in 2019 to design an innovative mental health system. In the county’s complaint, it says Mind OC didn’t document its work, properly maintain records, or justify its invoices on the project. The county also alleged that Mind OC sought to turn in, as its primary deliverable, a document authored by county staff. Ultimately, the county paid Mind OC $7.4 million of the contract.

The county also alleges that Mind OC charged excessive rents to the county’s service providers at the Be Well campus in Orange in violation of its lease agreement. 

The county claims that Mind OC misused taxpayer funds by charging the county’s service providers on the campus rent that equated to “approximately double Mind OC’s operating expenses and well beyond market rate.”

Mind OC said in its prior legal complaint that the county “approved the subleases it now complains about.”

The county claims there was a conflict of interest when Mind OC subcontracted with a person with ties to Do.

Mind OC subcontracted in 2020 with the then-girlfriend of Do’s chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn. She failed to deliver, as previously reported by LAist. In its complaint, the county said the contract with Josie Batres, who is now married to Wangsaporn, was “emblematic of conflicts of interest that cloud the venture from its inception.”

Batres was paid $275,000 over two years to run community listening sessions and submit reports to help the county increase access to publicly-funded mental health services. County officials say the work was never turned in.

After LAist’s reporting on the matter, the county demanded a refund, which Mind OC paid in November 2024.

In its complaint this week, the county said “Mind OC promised an investigation into the misappropriation, a promise that, to date, has gone unfulfilled.”

Other complaints laid out in the lawsuit against Mind OC include allegations that the nonprofit violated patient privacy on the Orange health campus by installing cameras in service provider areas and having property management staff check in patients and screen phone calls.

The county also said Mind OC failed to meet a major goal of the Be Well campus — to have a quarter of all patients served come with their own private insurance, according to the lawsuit and a 2024 audit.

“Mind OC, a non-profit, took positions designed to maximize its profits at the expense of County taxpayers and residents in dire need of affordable mental health services,” a county spokesperson wrote in a news release.

How to watchdog your local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your City Council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The Orange County Board of Supervisors meets on alternating Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 400 West Civic Center Drive, Santa Ana. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

Typically on the morning of Eid-ul-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims wear their best clothes and head to parks or convention centers across Southern California.

After the prayer and special sermon, there is another revered tradition to be followed.

Donuts.

After a month of fasting, Muslims wait for the glazed donut for their first breakfast.

(

Courtesy ISOC

)

As in, glazed donuts. Hundreds and hundreds — even thousands — of them are handed out by volunteers as people line up. The donut of choice? Krispy Kremes, although it’s not mandated.

It’s a specifically SoCal tradition that has been happening, some tell me, for at least 20 years.

Unity through donuts

Sweet treats are a staple of Eid across the world.

When family and friends stop over, they are greeted with tables laden with different sweet dishes.

In South Asian households, gulab jamun (fried dough balls swimming in a sugar syrup) take pride of place. Arab families make maamoul, a date mixture pressed between shortbread cookie dough. Cookies, called kuih, are popular in Southeast Asian households, and in Somali homes, halwa is served.

In SoCal, a region with Muslims from many different backgrounds, deciding what a mosque should serve after prayers can be tricky. A donut is a neat solution.

“ We have a very diverse community, so some of the desserts can become a little too ethnic for one group versus the other,” said Alam Akhtar, chairman at the Islamic Society of Orange County. “Donut is that one food that just cuts across all ethnicities and all taste buds.”

It’s also a way for their American identity to come to the fore.

In recent years, the Islamic Society of Orange County has switched to donuts from small businesses that pepper the Little Saigon area.

(

Courtesy ISOC

)

Food, Akhtar said, has a way of uniting people from different cultures and plays an important role in celebrations.

 ”Feeding people in general is considered a very spiritual act,” he said. “It brings people together. More hands in a plate has more blessings.”

Last year, the Islamic Society of Orange County mosque in Garden Grove — affectionately called the “mother mosque” of Southern California — decided to change things up a bit and bought pastries from Porto’s Bakery.

It did not go well. People wanted their donuts and made their point of view clear.

 "This year, we're going to aim for donuts again, based on popular demand and the request from the crowd,” said Hassan Mukhlis, the mosque president.

Boxes and boxes of donuts to feed the crowd of 3,000 people.

(

Courtesy ISOC

)

Krispy Kreme has been the mosque’s go-to vendor for the past decade or so, but in recent years, it has looked to support a local, small business to buy the 3,000 donuts needed to feed the crowd that gathers. The mosque is located in Little Saigon, an ethnic enclave with predominantly Vietnamese immigrants, so it plans to order from a Vietnamese bakery.

Traditions live on ... with a twist

Aliya Amin grew up attending the Islamic Society of Orange County and went on to teach at its weekend school. She now supplies desserts to the cafe on the mosque’s premises, Barakah Cafe.

The Gulab Jamun Donut available during Eid season at Bakes by Aliya.

(

Courtesy Bakes by Aliya

)

Her earliest memory of the donut lines after Eid prayers were when she was 9 years old. Now, the 29-year-old still says it's not Eid without the donuts. In her specialty microbakery, Bakes by Aliya, she takes the humble food and adds a creative, South Asian twist

Her version, Gulab Jamun Donut, is inspired by a gulab jamun, a fried dough ball that is soaked in a cardamom and saffron sugar syrup.

“ I essentially make a cake donut, which is cardamom cake flavored, and I have the gulab jamun sitting in the middle, and it's like the perfect balance of spiced but sweet,” Amin said.

She offers the donut only during the Eid season. It’s become one of her best sellers.

Donuts are for every age group, she said.

“I'm seeing adults eat it, too, you know, enjoying it just as much as kids,” Amin said.

The gulab jamun donuts have to be preordered by Sunday. To order, click here.