There have been an unusual number of Spare The Air days so far this year, and that has caused the usual chorus of protests on Patch to become louder and more numerous.
A typical complaint goes something like this: with four major refineries in the Bay Area, why does the Bay Area Air Quality Management District feel the need to ban fires in home fireplaces, particularly on cold, and even rainy, days?
People have burned fires in their homes and backyards for years, with seemingly no ill effects on health. So why are there suddenly a rash of days when people are legally prohibited from having a cozy fire in the privacy of their own homes?
Patch asked air district spokesman Ralph Borrmann for a few minutes. Here’s what he had to say:
Patch: Why can refineries operate normally on Spare The Air days, but private citizens can’t have a simple fire in their fireplace?
Borrmann: The air district does regulate and enforce regulations and restrictions on refineries. But you have to keep in mind that there are also roughly 1.4 million fireplaces in the Bay Area. Fifty percent of the homes in this area have fireplaces. They produce much larger particulates than refineries. When those levels look as if they are going to be elevated on certain days, that’s when we restrict wood burning. Fine particulate pollution is one of the greatest health threats. It’s associated with asthma, heart disease and other very serious illnesses. If you can’t see it, people assume it isn’t there. But that’s not true with drinking water or eating food, and it’s not true with air. That’s why we have a monitoring network, and a technical staff that has decades of experience.
Patch: People have been burning fires since the Stone Age. What’s the problem now?
Borrmann: In the last couple of the decades, we’ve learned a lot about wood smoke that we didn’t know in the past. High amount of particulates are linked to respiratory incidents. So just as the air district regulates industrial sources of pollution, it also has authority to regulate fireplaces. We are also required by federal law—the Clean Air Act--to meet standards of clean air. It makes sense that when we believe air quality to be unhealthy, to have a ban on those days.
Patch: What about rainy days?
Borrmann: Wind is the major factor. You can have a little bit of rain and still not have enough pressure in the system to move the pollutants and ventilate them. You need wind. What’s been happening this month is this system sitting over northern California is impacting the Bay Area, and it’s not allowing for the dispersal of pollutants. They build up day by day. On certain days they’re going to peak. That’s when we call an alert. People think particulates are washed out by the rain. When we talk about particulates, especially fine particulates, they behave like a gas to some extent. They don’t necessarily get washed out. They penetrate the body’s defenses.
There are particulates associated with any type of combustion. Refineries put out air pollution. Diesel trucks put out a lot of particulates. They’re a concern, and the air district has focused on the Port of Oakland to reduce particulates in that location.
So what you see when you see smoke is incomplete combustion. When it comes out of a chimney, it’s not combusting it cleanly, it’s still highly polluting. And that’s very harmful. We know a lot more now about the health effects of things than we did decades ago. As we know more, the health standards issued by the federal government get stricter.
From sparetheair.org: PM2.5, also called "fine particulates," consists of particles with diameters that are less than or equal to 2.5 microns in size. PM2.5 is a more serious health concern than PM10, since smaller particles can travel more deeply into our lungs and cause more harmful effects. Borrmann dodged the question- the particulates emitted by refineries (PM2.5) are a more serious health concern according to sparetheair.org. Fireplaces produce much larger particulates- a less serious health concern (but a health concern nonetheless). So why aren't refineries included in the restrictions? There is a presumption behind this question that the BAAQMD finds it preferable to target individuals as opposed to large commercial interests. This is in part evidenced by the BAAQMD's attempt to overlook the criminal bypass of emissions monitoring equipment at the Chevron refinery. The BAAQMD should be more candid and straightforward about the actual reasoning behind the choice to focus only on wood burning during spare-the-air days. That fireplaces produce much larger particulates than refineries undermines their own rationale.
They need to be trimmed back to their original mission.
It seems reasonable to ask that residents not burn wood fires on days when the air is particularly bad, especially since most people don't need fires to keep warm. As Bormann says, the refinery's emissions are regulated and limited, and asking the refinery to shut down on spare the air days would be a very costly measure. I've always felt that spare the air days were a great way of making people aware that air pollution is something that all of us contribute to, so we can all play a role in making it better.
BAAQMD does not have the authority to reduce all sources of air pollution to zero without regard to impacts. Fireplace Spare The Air is an attempt to do that.
"The bay Area quality Control Board is just another bureaucratic overblown agency." It feels that there may be a general misunderstanding of what Spare the Air is. The point of Spare the Air is to take a look at the pollution levels AND... ... issue burn bans ... suggest carpooling or staying off the road ... alert groups who have health programs whether or not the air is safe Just because YOU do not benefit from Spare the Air, does not mean that there are large groups of us with health issues that don't. Asthma is a common ailment and one of the groups that Spare the Air aims to inform when the pollution levels get too high. There are times when the pollution is bad enough that people should be staying inside, period. I'm not from the area, but I understand that the Bay Area does have wildfires. Sacramento tends to get wildfires quite a bit, and they will issue alerts when the pollution is high enough to be unhealthy. This is *very very* helpful. FYI ... Spare the Air Burn Bans have exemptions for people whose only way of getting heat is from burning wood.
The facts in this story and on the BAAQMD web site about pollution from wood-burning fireplaces illustrates a very real health hazard to people like my wife who have asthma and/or allergies. The incomplete combustion from open fireplaces causes very real discomfort, harm, work loss, and pain for people like her. Of course, this pollution can be reduced using fireplace inserts and wood stoves with much higher efficiencies and/or emission control systems, but many people in the Bay Area are still using the same open-fireplace wood burning technologies as people use in Albania and Buigaria--with the same bad results.
In other words there are wide gradations in particle emissions from fires but the BAAQMD apparently treats them all the same.Except that extremely smoky fires are never permitted even on burn days.There is probably data somewhere on the internet that documents all this. My gut feeling is that if you cannot see any smoke from the chimney, the particle count is near zero.
In 2011 and the 1st half of 2012, there were _zero_ days in which the air within the Spare the Air region exceeded particulate limits. _Zero_. BAAQMD argues that this is a success of their program. Perhaps. But it's also evidence that there is _no_legal_basis_ for their continued tightening of the standards and an increase in Spare the Air days.
From the Spare the Air Website: How does the Air District know to call a Winter Spare the Air Alert? The Air District meteorologists evaluate the levels of fine particulate air pollution and meteorological conditions in order to forecast which days will have unhealthy air quality (typically on cold, still, winter days with stagnant air). This is similar to how it's done in the Valley, where they measure levels every hour. "But it's also evidence that there is _no_legal_basis_ for their continued tightening of the standards and an increase in Spare the Air days." Uhhh ... this statement is kind of out there. They have a legal basis, which is how they made the program mandatory. Maybe you should actually read the article? 'What’s been happening this month is this system sitting over northern California is impacting the Bay Area, and it’s not allowing for the dispersal of pollutants.'
Dismaying.
I would love to see AQMD (or anyone) go after transportation though. Reduced BART fares and higher bridge tolls on bad air days? That wouldn't do much for diesel, but it's a start.