By Tom Frantz For the past 10 years, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (air district) has issued an annual report to Valley residents regarding its past activities, recent air [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air
Clearing the Air: Air District Lies to the Public
By Tom Frantz The San Joaquin Valley had extremely high levels of air pollution over the holidays. From Dec. 24 to Jan. 5, the hospital emergency wards were jammed. People died in excessive [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Air District Chief Leaving
By Tom Frantz The end of an era has come at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Seyed Sadredin is retiring after more than 10 years as the chief executive officer. A look at his [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: California Dairies Are Unsustainable
By Tom Frantz The factory dairies of the San Joaquin Valley contribute more to our air pollution and global warming than any other sector. Their onsite ammonia and VOC emissions plus the thousands of [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Biomass | Recycle or Burn?
By Tom Frantz On Nov. 7 and 8, a Biomass Summit was hosted by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier. The purpose [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Angry White Men and Air Quality
By Tom Frantz Here are three items that might be of interest to those whose health is affected by local air quality. First, the air quality index (AQI) used by the local air district needs to be [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Ozone Implosion
By Tom Frantz As the dust-reddened sun rose over the city, residents reluctantly crawled out of bed shaking off headaches from oxygen deprivation due to a night of breathing dirty air. Talking heads [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: The Sierra Forests and Air Pollution
By Tom Frantz We know that most of our air pollution comes from industrial operations and mobile sources. But this pollution does not just stay in the air that we breathe on the Valley floor. Summer [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Ozone Fraud
By Tom Frantz Summertime ozone levels in the San Joaquin Valley do serious damage to the health of residents. Ozone is a gas formed by human activity. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are one of the precursors [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Dust
By Tom Frantz No one living in the San Joaquin Valley is shocked to see a film of dust on their car the day after a wash. In this valley, we have a serious and health damaging dust problem. And this [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Science Proves the Benefits of Cleaning Our Air
By Tom Frantz The American Lung Association, in its annual State of the Air report, leaves no doubt that the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley has the worst fine particulate matter (PM2.5) [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Congress Is Trying to Gut the Clean Air Act
By Tom Frantz HR 806, the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017, is the brainchild of our San Joaquin Valley Air Board, and it is being sponsored in Congress by Valley legislators Jim Costa [...] Continue Reading