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that's pretty awful in itself, but in a related article i read today, air quality in california isn't doing us any good either...
Bad air costing state billions in medical bills
(11-12) 20:37 PST --
California has the worst air in the country, and 20 million people living in the dirtiest regions lose billions of dollars a year due to medical bills and missed work days, according to a new study.
The health costs from breathing soot swirling in the air in the winter and smog in the summer are the highest in the Los Angeles basin and San Joaquin Valley, areas rivaled only by Houston for filthy air, the study said.
"Most people cannot choose the air that they breathe, and there is a clear scientific consensus that people's lives are shortened by air pollution. Kids are made sick. Work days are lost," said Jane Hall, professor of economics at California State University at Fullerton and the leader of the team that did the study and has researched the impact of air pollution for two decades.
The cost of air pollution in the two regions - which are the top violators of the federal Clean Air Act - is estimated at $28 billion a year. But because the state's economy is closely integrated, the costs in these hubs of manufacturing, shipping, entertainment and agriculture put a damper on all of California, the researchers found.
The financial burden on families, hospitals, health maintenance organizations and employers from premature deaths and respiratory and heart problems in the two regions - home to more than half the state's population - fans out to the rest of state, the economists found.
Counties in the Los Angeles metropolitan region on average exceeded ozone standards up to 120 days a year between 2005 and 2007, with the most days in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The San Joaquin Valley on average exceeded ozone standards up to 139 days a year; the counties with the greatest number of days with high ozone levels were Tulare, Stanislaus, Merced and Madera. The Los Angeles region exceeded particulate standards up to 48 days a year, and in the valley, up to 76 days a year. To comply with federal standards, both regions would have to cut their ozone and particulate levels in half.
The study found that in the San Joaquin Valley, the cost of air pollution comes to more than $1,600 per person per year, which would translate into a total of nearly $8 billion in savings if federal ozone and particulate-matter standards were met.
In the Southern California counties, the cost is more than $1,250 per person per year, nearly $22 billion in savings if the standards were met, the study said.
By meeting federal air-quality standards, the regions could avoid annually 3,860 premature deaths among those age 30 and older, 13 premature deaths in infants and 1,950 cases of adult onset chronic bronchitis. Cleaner air could prevent 2,760 hospital admissions, 141,370 asthma attack, 2,800 emergency room visits and 466,880 lost days of work, the study said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...43CPV.DTL&tsp=1
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