Air Pollution Worse in ‘87, Cleanup Stalled, EPA Says

WASHINGTON — Air pollution grew worse in many areas of the country last year, in part because of a long, hot summer that exacerbated smog in the East, the Environmental Protection Agency reported Tuesday.

The agency painted a mixed picture of the nation’s overall air quality--better in some areas and worse in others--which contrasts sharply with Reagan Administration forecasts several years ago that “all but a handful” of cities would meet most clean air standards by now.

Overall, the report indicated that progress in cleaning up the air has become stalled in many places, a conclusion that may increase pressure on Congress to take long-delayed action on proposals for strengthening the Clean Air Act.

‘Boost’ to Congress

“This should provide an important boost,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who has been leading efforts toward a tougher air pollution law. The report, he said, “confirms that more than 110 million people in cities across the country are being forced to breathe unhealthy air.”

The EPA’s latest compilation of air quality data added some details to general assessments of air pollution problems that the EPA and private groups have issued in recent months.

According to the findings, in 1987, the air over 68 regions did not meet federal standards on ozone, the principal component of smog, and more than a dozen areas that once met the ozone standards, including Kings County in California, now have unhealthful air. As usual, Los Angeles topped the list of the nation’s worst ozone-pollution spots.

High ozone levels can cause lung damage with extended exposure and breathing difficulties, particularly for children, the elderly and people who are exercising.

Carbon Monoxide Progress

The data showed improvement nationally in the levels of another pollutant, carbon monoxide, a gas in automobile exhaust that can aggravate heart problems in some people. That improvement, however, has come far more slowly than the Administration predicted when it issued the current clean air-policies several years ago. Still, 59 urban areas--including Los Angeles and parts of Orange County--continue to have unhealthful amounts of carbon monoxide in their air.

In all, with several cities flunking both the ozone and the carbon monoxide tests, 107 areas, including 24 of the country’s 25 largest metropolitan regions, had unhealthful air during periods of 1987, the new EPA data showed.

EPA officials emphasized that weather problems aggravated pollution in 1987. “We had a hot, dry summer in the East, which tends to push up ozone levels,” Chris Rice of the agency said. Ozone is produced when sunlight causes chemical reactions between organic compounds in the air and the nitrogen oxides in engine exhausts.

Environmentalists said that weather was a poor excuse, however. “We’ve got two variables, weather and pollution,” said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We can do something about one, but not the other. What we need to do is reduce pollution levels so that when we do have bad weather, it doesn’t make the air unhealthy.”

Los Angeles Ozone

The data on Los Angeles dramatized the intractability of the area’s smog problem, both in the number of days of unhealthful air--one out of three in each of the last three years--and the severity of ozone pollution, which was sometimes triple the level the EPA considers safe.

No other U.S. city had unhealthful ozone levels more often than 50 days a year, and no city had smog levels near those recorded in Los Angeles. In fact, only eight cities, including San Diego and four others in California, violated the ozone standard on more than 10 days last year.

San Diego had unhealthful amounts of ozone on 27 days last year and Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto and Visalia also exceeded the federal ozone limit more than 10 times.

San Diego and Santa Barbara, both former violators of carbon monoxide standards, have now met them, the EPA reported, but Anaheim, Chico, Fresno, Modesto, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose joined Los Angeles in reporting continued carbon monoxide problems.