paper 2

Date

Study topic background

Air pollution is a threat health as it results to a number of health complications such as lung diseases and asthma. California, the most populated state in the United States is regarded as the home for the most polluted cities. In addition to human activities, climate change has been significantly linked to air pollution in California as wildfires produce smoke that results in poor air quality within the state. In addition to climate change, factories and industries in California together with vehicle emissions have significantly contributed in air pollution. Air monitoring shows more than 90 percent of residents in California are exposed to unhealthy levels of one or more air pollutants in some parts of the year. According to the California Air Resources Board (CARB), some pollutants are toxic and can result in severe and long-term impacts such as cancer (CARB, 2020). Furthermore, poor air quality contributes to a long year trend of faltering progress which reduces ozone thus triggering asthma attacks and other air pollution related health problems. The proposed paper seeks to research on factors that contribute to increased air pollution in California and measures that can be put in place to reduce air pollution.

The controversy of air pollution in California

Majority of experts argue that the reason as to why California has the worst air quality in the world is as a result of wildfires and not human activities. Bay area in California is hardly hit with some of the worst air quality globally. The smoke from the wildfires is all over the space in California exposing residents to low quality air. Wildfires have diverted the attention on human activities that contribute to air pollution within the state. On top of the wildfires, smog high levels and summer intense heat waves result in the worst ozone pollution in the area (Barboza, 2020). Experts are working to uncover the influence of wildfires, climate change, and automobile emissions on air pollution. They have argued that the pandemic has given them unparalleled natural experiment following movement restrictions which has significantly reduced human activities that contribute to air pollution such as vehicle emissions. The pandemic has shown what happens when one source of air pollution is drastically curtailed. From the pandemic, scientists learned that decades of regulating passenger vehicles to reduce vehicle emissions is no longer the dominant source of smog forming pollution in California (Barboza, 2020). Furthermore, the pandemic helped scientists learn that if they take half of vehicles off the road, they will clean CO2 significantly, however, CO2 does not contribute to smog formation.

Reducing air pollution

High temperatures are the main reason why air is so dirty in California. Air temperatures can be lowered by reducing emission of gases such nitrogen and oxides. Focusing reduction of ozone generating pollutants will help minimized air pollution in general.

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