Citizens To Be Heard-7-25-12  AACOG Air Tech Meeting

Good morning. My name is Mark Langford and I am the editor of OzoneInformation.Com, a citizen of Bexar County and a lifelong asthmatic.

If I told you that there was a law on the books that could penalize people for having gray hair before the age of 55, you’d think that was completely “ridiculous”. Men and women can’t control the genetics that determines when their hair will turn gray.

But if I told you that the Clean Air Act penalizes areas for having high ozone events when it’s beyond their control, you would not question the EPA or Congress on their science. It’s time to question the science and the Clean Air Act. Depending on this year’s presidential election, the current administration has made it known that they are in favor of lowering the high ozone threshold to even lower parts per billion, sending most of the country into “non-attainment”.

Join me while we look at a Power Point Presentation that illustrates why the current 8hr, three year ozone average is “ridiculous”.

1. Looking at my second slide, you can see our first high ozone event of 2012 that has put San Antonio very close to being in violation of the Clean Air Act. Notice how the high ozone days are clustered around two days at the end of June and that July there are now high ozone days, despite it being very hot and the same emissions going on as June. Now look at slide 3 and notice that the high ozone event in June also occurred in Austin and Corpus. Houston and Dallas also had high ozone readings during those times.
2. It’s all about the weather! Winds during those high ozone days were out of the NE-East. As we have seen time and time again, winds from the NE-East usher in pollution (biogenic and anthropogenic sources) into the San Antonio area, spiking our ozone readings to levels that do not occur without outside influences.
3. As an example, let’s look at slide 5. This graphic shows the ozone that was recorded at Joshua Tree National Park from May 3^rd-May 12^th of this year. As you can see, their 8hr average exceeded the Clean Air Act on the 10^th-12^th of May.  Looking at slide 6, you can see that Joshua Tree is located in a very remote location in the desert of southern California. Los Angeles is to the west and San Diego is to the SW. Slide 7 shows an image of what it looks like at the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.  As you can clearly see, this is a desolate region, devoid of cars, trucks, power plants and manufacturing. But, as you saw in slide 5, they also have high ozone events. Since they obviously are not emitting pollutants of their own, then it must be assumed that their high ozone is the result of transported pollution from Los Angeles and other sources in the region. Same logic can be used for San Antonio. Even though we are a city of over a million people, our pollution is not enough to exceed the EPA 8hr standard without outside factors.
4. Now let’s look at the next graphic…slide 8. This information is from a report found on the American Lung Association using Asthma Rates from the Centers for Disease Control. States with some of the highest ozone problems have asthma rates below the national average, including Texas. This information has not been hidden, yet it is never mentioned in any EPA reports that discuss a link between asthma and high ozone events. As an asthmatic, I have never had an attack during a high ozone event.
5. Lastly, let’s look at slides 9 and 10. Part of the problem when we have high ozone events is due to natural causes. Besides the obvious natural cause, the weather, there are other natural causes as well. For ozone to form, it needs several chemical reactions to occur. First, there must be NOx (nitrogen oxides), then it needs sunlight (in abundance in south Texas) and lastly it needs volatile organic compounds. According to the EPA, biogenic (natural) emissions were estimated to contribute 74 percent to VOC emissions from all sources during 2005. One of my theories on why our ozone spikes when winds are out of the NE-East, is that high levels of biogenic VOCs flow into our area from the vast forested regions of the Eastern United States. We still have to have man-made NOx to  start the process, but the normally low levels of ozone that are recorded when the winds are not out of the NE-East are quickly elevated when those winds occur.

Thank you for your time.

Mark Langford