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.

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Los Angeles Public Library archive

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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.

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American Lung Association

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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.

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South Coast Air Quality Management District

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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.

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Andrew Cullen for LAist

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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.

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David McNew/Getty Images

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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.

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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"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.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California regulators ordered Health Net to fix how it’s handling the termination of assisted living services for low-income residents after the insurer’s abrupt decision left patients and providers scrambling. The state’s corrective action plan requires Health Net to extend services for all members until the end of the year, rather than stopping some as soon as October.

Health Net, one of the largest Medicaid insurers in the country, notified providers several months ago that it was ending its assisted living and home care services contracts. The services are optional under Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — meaning an insurer can decide annually whether it will continue coverage. Providers and family members said they got little or no warning, leaving them confused and panicked about finding other arrangements.

In an August letter to Health Net, the Department of Health Care Services cited eight deficiencies in the insurer’s handling of the change, including failure to submit transition plans for members, failure to move members to other medically appropriate care, and denying services to members. Regulators wrote that violations “jeopardize member safety, disrupt continuity of care, and endanger medically vulnerable members.”

If Health Net does not extend benefits and create individualized transition plans for each affected member, the state may fine them $25,000 per member per day of violation, the letter states.

Advocates and providers estimate about 3,500 Medi-Cal patients rely on Health Net to pay for assisted living costs. Most are elderly, and many have cognitive issues like dementia. Health Net operates Medi-Cal plans in 10 counties: Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare.

In a statement to CalMatters, Health Net spokesperson Beatriz Lopez said the company still plans to end the services next year, but will now cover all members through the end of the year.

“Health Net and DHCS share a commitment to advancing the health and well-being of Medi-Cal members,” Lopez said.

Health Net has previously told CalMatters the assisted living benefit “has not led to better care” in terms of fewer emergency room visits or days hospitalized. The benefit is part of CalAIM, a broad state initiative to improve Medi-Cal services and save money by stabilizing high-cost users who frequently end up in emergency rooms. Lopez said Health Net would continue analyzing data and supporting services that result in better health outcomes.

Providers confirmed to CalMatters that their contracts would run through the end of the year.

Thousands still face January deadline

Hagar Dickman, director of long-term services and supports at Justice In Aging, said the state’s corrective action plan resolves the immediate crisis but fails to address the long-term problem: “Thousands of older Californians are still set to lose their housing on January 1st.”

Allowing health insurers to cancel housing-related benefits creates problems, Dickman said, because most assisted living residents have no other home to return to. Additionally, the Department of Health Care Services has stated that if a member moves to another insurer that still covers assisted living, continuity of care protections would no longer apply, meaning the new insurer might not approve the member's assisted living costs.

"It’s disingenuous to say there are protections and then say the protections don’t apply,” Dickman said. "So the option is skilled nursing or homelessness.”

Pauline Shatara, deputy director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, agreed that state protections are inadequate.

“It doesn’t sound like we found a solution to help pay for these people to remain where they are,” Shatara said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach will make a slew of parking tickets more expensive and charge higher cannabis taxes to avoid cutting library hours and some specialized police officers. The last-minute change, proposed hours before a City Council vote, reversed a controversial plan city leaders laid out in June to lay off nearly a dozen library employees to help balance its budget.

Facing a $58 million shortfall, the city will still lay off roughly 180 other employees and cut hundreds more vacant positions. But it will spare library staffing and hours, after the original budget — which would have cut Monday hours at five city libraries, the only ones open that day — prompted fierce public backlash.

Long Beach City Council members voted 7 to 2 on Tuesday for the revised $4-billion city budget.

Councilmember Cindy Allen, who objected, called the increased parking fines “predatory fees,” arguing that library funding shouldn’t come at the expense of unfairly targeting people already struggling financially. Allen represents a district that includes the densely populated Alamitos Beach and Rose Park neighborhoods, where parking is already scarce. “We don’t have driveways,” she said.

Kristina Duggan, who represents southeast Long Beach neighborhoods like Belmont Shore, also voted against the budget because it cut Fire Engine 14 near Colorado Lagoon, a move that’s expected to save $3.88 million but drive up response times.

Duggan and Allen both tried but failed to delay the budget vote, with Allen saying the changes were put together in a “slapdash manner” without a chance for the public to weigh in.

She warned her colleagues before the vote that if they approved the budget “without substantial discussion” then they were “complicit in rubber-stamping” a plan that would “affect people’s livelihoods.”

Under the plan, 18 categories of parking citations — including for blocking bike lanes, hydrants, double parking and crosswalks — will rise to a flat $100, up from $74 or $90, to generate $1.5 million. Street sweeping tickets would also get a $5 bump, to $80 — a difference that raises $700,000 in revenue.

In the last fiscal year, which ran Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the city issued more than 100,000 parking citations and 201,000 street-sweeping tickets, Public Works Director Josh Hickman said. More than a fifth of street-sweeping tickets were written in Allen’s district, and more than half of all parking tickets citywide were issued in the first two council districts, which include downtown and Alamitos Beach.

John Edmond, a local lobbyist who sits on the board for the Library Foundation and spoke in support of the plan, said the $100 rates are on par with cities like San Francisco ($108), Oakland ($110), San Diego ($117). He argued this applies to the “most serious parking violations.”

“We can’t say we’re serious about pedestrian and bicycle safety without accountability,” he said.

The budget also raises the city’s cannabis retail tax from 7% to 8% and increases the cultivation tax to more than $15 per square foot, changes expected to bring in roughly $1.15 million.

The proposals came from Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie, who chairs the city’s Budget Oversight Committee. Ricks-Oddie said earlier Tuesday she had spent weeks preparing these and dozens of other recommendations in concert with city staff, continuously updating them to accommodate new requests that came in from the public and fellow council members.

“If we can’t do this … then we can’t fund the libraries,” Ricks-Oddie said in response to Allen’s concerns about pricier parking citations. “If we reject that, we’re saying no to our library hours on a Monday.”

The budget also sets aside $1 million for the city’s immigration legal defense fund, the Long Beach Justice Fund. That’s well short of the $2.2 million immigration attorneys and local immigrant rights groups say is needed to sustain it amid rising caseloads. Gina Amato Lough of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project said “the need has never been greater,” citing prolonged detentions, warrantless raids and difficulty accessing counsel.

Since Public Counsel’s $919,000, one-year contract to provide legal services began in November, the group has taken on more than 55 consultations and 46 full-scope cases through the Justice Fund.

After hearing repeated pleas for more money Tuesday, Allen proposed reallocating all the funding for Long Beach’s new Vibe City marketing campaign — which some have derided as a waste of money — to the Justice Fund. She was quickly shot down, with a representative from the City Attorney’s office saying they’re not sure that would be legal, considering the Vibe City campaign is funded by tax revenue earmarked for advertising and promoting the city.

City Council leaders called the budget cuts a necessary, if painful, step toward stabilizing Long Beach’s finances after years of instability papered over with one-time cash — a bet that higher fees now will spare deeper cuts later.

“It’s hard, and it’s personal for everyone, and it will be really difficult on families across this community,” said Councilmember Megan Kerr.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Colorful parade floats, charros on horseback and live music will take over Cesar E. Chavez Avenue on Sunday for the 80th East L.A. Mexican Independence Day Parade.

For decades, organizers have brought together community leaders, performers, businesses and organizations to celebrate culture, community and tradition. This year, the parade will culminate in a festival with family-friendly activations, including live music, local vendors and lucha libre. 

This year’s co-grand marshals are singer and actor Dasahev López Saavedra, better known as El Dasa, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis.

Here’s everything you need to know.

When is the parade and festival?

The parade runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 13. The festival takes place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on First Street and Mednik Avenue. 

What’s the parade route? 

The 1.5-mile route will run along Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, starting at Mednik Avenue and ending on Gage Avenue. You can find a map of the parade route and other festivities on the festival’s webpage here. Early arrival is suggested to secure a viewing spot for the parade. 

A map of the East LA Mexican Independence Day Parade route.

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Courtesy of the organizers

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What streets will be closed?

• Mednik Avenue: Between 1st Street and Cesar E. Chavez from 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.
• Cesar E. Chavez Avenue: Between Vancouver Avenue and Gage Avenue from 6  a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.

What can I expect at the festivities?

The parade will feature floats, show cars, representatives from Eastside organizations, equestrian teams, marching bands and folklórico dancers. 

The festival will include vendors, musical performances, resource booths, a pop-up from local boutique The Goddess Mercado, a free pet vaccination clinic that will administer free vaccines for the first 200 pets, and a free lucha libre showcase by East Los Lucha. 

Where can I park? 

Limited free parking will be available at the East L.A. Civic Center lot located on E. 3rd Street and Civic Center Way. Attendees can also find street parking in the surrounding area. 

Can I take public transit to the event? 

The Metro E Line’s East L.A. Civic Center station is just a short walk from the event. 

What if I don’t want to attend in person? 

If you’re unable to attend or want to watch the parade from home, you can tune in to the live broadcast on ABC7. 

For more information, check out the website here. 

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Robbie Hall has a record of the people she has treated for overdoses at MacArthur Park.

The photos of many of the people she has treated are saved on her phone. She can scroll through them and remember each one.

Hall, an ambassador with the nonprofit Five Keys, has been doing this work for about four years and is at the park almost every day, carrying Naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.

She typically responds when someone stops breathing.

“I stopped counting when I got up in my 40s, because it started being gradually three of them, four of them,” Hall said. 

On a recent September morning at the park, Hall said she found a 14-year-old girl in a bathroom who was experiencing an overdose. Tears welled up as she talked about the people she encounters at the park.

“They need help, they need help,” she said. “This is every day.” 

She believes the city needs to address the problem. When asked about the plans to fence the park, she said she sees the fence as one way to improve the conditions she sees on the ground.

“They need to put something up here,” she said.

For Hall and others who work around the park, the fence is less a solution than a stopgap, something concrete to try amid problems that have proven harder to solve.

The Department of Recreation and Parks says the fence will be temporary and is still on track for construction this fall, but has not provided a specific date, cost estimate or explained what conditions would need to change before the fence comes down.

Marco Pacheco, president of the MacArthur Park Park Advisory Board, does not believe the fence will be temporary. 

“I think this is going to be permanent,” Pacheco said. “This is going to be a permanent fixture of some sort because first of all, you don’t put up a fence that costs millions of dollars to take it down. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pacheco isn’t the only one who has doubts.

Richard Barron, who served on the Cultural Heritage Commission for 22 years before departing in July, also questioned whether the city would follow through on its promise to remove the fence.

“I doubt that the fence is going to come down,” Barron said, “especially when they’ve spent all that money. Even taking it down costs a lot of money, you know, and you’re going to throw all that material away?”

The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved $2.3 million in funding for the project. The city has not said how much money will ultimately be spent on the fence.

Everyone has a different idea of what the fence will do

The city’s consultants have described a fence that would be transparent, reversible and designed to blend into the park.

Leila Hamroun, a senior preservation architect with Tetra Tech, the consulting firm working with the city on the project’s design, said the fence won’t be a dominant feature.

“The whole intent here is to guarantee that it just blends in, that it’s seamless,” Hamroun said. “It’s reversible, transparent, minimalist, consistent with the evolution of urban parks over time.”

A rendering shows the proposed green metal fence around MacArthur Park.

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Courtesy L.A. Recreation and Parks

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The fence is expected to be about 8 feet tall, with gates at eight existing entrances. Decorative elements would be considered separately, with community input expected next year.

For Michelle Garcia, who has been a vendor around MacArthur Park since 2015, it could help distinguish vendors from the people living in the park.

“I support it if they could get the homeless people out,” Garcia said. “They are the ones that make MacArthur Park look bad. But they also make us look bad, because we sell around the area, so they think we’re like them, which we’re not.”

Garcia was among a group of vendors at MacArthur Park who held a Sept. 2 press conference to call attention to what they described as police harassment and citations that pushed vendors away from the park.

“Like us, we’re trying to work and get money for our bills, our rent,” she said.

Police have their own expectations for what a fenced park could accomplish.

The Los Angeles Police Department has stepped up enforcement around the park through a joint task force with the Drug Enforcement Administration focused on drug dealing in the area. In July, Rampart Division Capt. Benedict Fernandes said the operation had significantly disrupted the drug trade, but that drug users were spreading into surrounding neighborhoods in search of narcotics.

“We know that all the communities around have been impacted because it got spread this way, sort of like a shotgun blast,” he said. “It went south, it went east, it went north, it went west.”

Fernandes said the next phase of the enforcement effort would focus on connecting unhoused people and drug users with shelter and recovery services.

The fence, he said, is meant to make the park less convenient for drug activity and “prevent crime” inside the park.

“Because that’s the problem,” Fernandes said. “The Alvarado corridor at MacArthur Park has been convenient for drug users for years. We’re just trying to make those things stop.”

Fernandes said the temporary fence along Alvarado and now the orange bollards installed in the area, have worked to disrupt that activity. 

But Hall, the outreach worker administering Narcan at the park, has not seen those types of improvements on the ground.

“Since they did that big bust? No, it got worse,” Hall said when asked whether she had seen fewer overdoses in the area.

She said people wait for police to leave the park before returning.

“If it wasn’t for Five Keys, there would be a lot more dead bodies here,” she said.

Some residents say that adding a fence around MacArthur Park would change the makeup of the neighborhood. Others welcome a change to the troubled park.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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How the fence is supposed to work

The plan calls for the park to remain open during the day, with eight entry points, and close overnight from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. LAPD would close the gates at night, and Recreation and Parks maintenance workers would reopen them each morning.

The department says the fence is intended to make the park easier to maintain. Illegal dumping, littering, vandalism and graffiti have made routine maintenance difficult, according to the department, which has said MacArthur Park generates more graffiti cleanup requests than nearby Lafayette Park.

The city has pointed to nearby Lafayette Park, which is fenced and closed at night, as a model for MacArthur Park.

Pacheco, the president of the park’s advisory board, said he has heard general support for the fence among community members. 

“In many cases, community members alluded to Lafayette Park having been fenced for a long time, the difference between the two parks, Lafayette being a lot safer and a lot cleaner and less of a problem than MacArthur Park,” he said. 

The fence still needs final approval from the five-person commission that approved the project’s conceptual phase in October. The commission has not yet set a date to consider the final plans.