Air Quality

The Port of Los Angeles paid a Chinese government-owned shipping company $5 million in 2005 to equip cargo vessels to plug into electric shore power while at dock to keep their massive diesel engines from polluting neighborhoods near the harbor. The company, China Shipping, used the money to upgrade 17 ships, but the city didn't get all the promised environmental benefits. Most of the vessels stopped traveling to Los Angeles in 2010, a Times review of shipping industry data showed.

High levels of potentially harmful exhaust particles from jets using Los Angeles International Airport have been detected in a broad swath of densely populated communities up to 10 miles east of the runways, a new air quality study reported Thursday. The research, believed to be the most comprehensive of its type, found that takeoffs and landings at LAX are a major source of ultrafine particles. They are being emitted over a larger area than previously thought, the study states, and in amounts about equal in magnitude to those from a large portion of the county's freeways.

In a new report that ranks countries by how well they protect the environment, the U.S. comes in at a disappointing 26th place among 180 nations.

Confirming what Chicago-area commuters have experienced for years, federal regulators have documented spikes of lung- and heart-damaging pollution in the acrid blue clouds that hover between diesel locomotives at Union Station. ...

"The Chinese government likes to hold authority over data for fear that different numbers than those from official sources could lead to social unrest," says Angel Hsu, a professor with the Yale School of Forestry And Environmental Studies, who has researched the poor quality of Chinese data. "China claims they don't have the human capacity to maintain and run the monitors," she says. "But they were monitoring air quality for over a decade; they just didn't release it because they were worried that it would lead to social unrest."

Sarah Uhl leads CATF's team focused on minimizing emissions of potent, short-lived climate pollutants including methane and black carbon. She also serves as co-chair of the Methane Partners Campaign, which advocates for nationwide methane pollution standards for the U.S. oil and gas industry. Read more

“Satellite instruments, particularly MODIS, have revolutionized the scientific community’s ability to understand the spatial extent, transport pathways, and the source areas of dust storms,” explained Thomas Gill, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso. “Largely because of MODIS, we now have a much better understanding of what specific kinds of landforms and landscapes are prone to initiate huge dust storms, which should lead to improved methods to forecast—and in some cases mitigate—such dust events.”

How do activists know how many trucks rumble through neighborhoods surrounding Port Newark, belching diesel fumes that aggravate the breathing problems of residents? They count them, one at a time, as the rigs roll by. ... Volunteers at the three Ironbound locations counted a total of 1,100 trucks during a 45-minute period, said Isella Ramirez, environmental justice coordinator for the Ironbound Community Corporation, neighborhood non-profit group.