The California forest that is home to the biggest and oldest living things on Earth, the giant Sequoia redwoods, also suffers a dubious distinction. It has the worst air pollution of any national park in the US.
“Ozone levels here are comparable to urban settings such as [Los Angeles],” said Emily Schrepf of the non-profit advocacy group the National Park Conservation Association. “It’s just not right.”
Signs in visitor centers warn guests when it is not safe to hike. The government employment Web site warns job applicants that the workplace is unhealthy. Park workers are briefed every year on the lung and heart damage the pollution can cause.
Although weakened trees are more susceptible to drought and pests, the long-term impact on the pines and on the giant redwoods that have been around for 3,000 years and more is unclear.
“If this is happening in a national park that isn’t even close to an urban area, what do you think is happening in your backyard?” said Annie Esperanza, a park scientist who has studied air quality there for 30 years.
It is a problem in a handful of the nation’s 52 parks that are monitored constantly for ozone, including Joshua Tree National Park in California’s Mojave Desert and North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, none is as severe as Sequoia and its neighbor, Kings Canyon.
While forest fires create some pollution, most comes from the San Joaquin Valley, the expanse of farmland that is home to California’s two busiest north-south trucking highways, diesel freight train corridors, food processing plants and tens of thousands of diesel tractors.
Smog is created when the sun’s rays hit pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds that are in motor vehicle exhaust, solvents, pesticides, gasoline vapors and decaying dairy manure.
“There is no simple answer to ozone pollution,” said Thomas Cahill, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, who studies air problem in Sequoia and across California.
Breathing ozone at high levels for even a short time can blister the lungs like UV rays blister skin, scientists agree.
The only way to improve air in the park is to improve the San Joaquin air basin, something that so far has proved elusive given the myriad sources of pollution. Even with hundreds of millions of US dollars spent to retrofit diesel engines and replace gasoline lawnmowers with electric ones, residents pay a federal fine for the region’s failure to meet even minimal EPA ozone limits.
“We don’t create a disproportionate amount of pollution; it’s just that we have these natural challenges, so that the pollution we do create can take literally weeks or months to clean out. It just builds up over time,” said Jaime Holt, spokeswoman for the valley air district.
Already this year, the level of ozone in Sequoia park has exceeded federal health standards, even though it is early in the summer ozone season. During the June-to-September summer season last year, the park violated the National Ambient Air Quality standard at least 87 times, compared with 56 times at Joshua Tree and 12 times at Great Smoky Mountains.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS