“What we have here is a failure to communicate…”

In the gap between the writing and publication of this column, the American Lung Association’s 2012 State of the Air Report will have been issued (www.stateoftheair.org). I’ll go way out on a limb here and predict straight F’s for the umpteenth year in a row.

The ALA Web site is the best one around for quick, easy access to information on the health risks and impacts associated with living in the dirtiest air basin in the nation. Just enter your zip code and brace yourself, especially if you open the charts showing trends for ozone and particle pollution. There, you will see EKG-like flatlines for any sign of life in making progress toward clean air. In the past few years, the levels for every key pollutant have bottomed. The patient, it would seem, has died. People certainly have.

In anticipation of its failing grades, the Valley Air Board activated its crisis communications staff, which duly issued its own report, along with other air districts from around the state, the week before ALA’s report came out. It was a feeble attempt to redirect the conversation away from health risks to one of “progress toward clean air.”

Praemonitus, praemunitus
Or, forewarned is forearmed. That ancient adage captures the communications gap between the hyper-defensive Valley Air Board and health advocacy organizations such as the Lung Association.

Advocates not only want real progress but also want the public to have easy access to information and effective warning systems. Are you a member of an “at-risk” group? When are you at greatest risk? You should be able to turn to the air board for quick answers.

However, the Valley Air Board, our region’s public health agency, is far more concerned with its image than your health. Don’t take my word for it. Go to its Web site, www.valleyair.org. See what you can learn about health risks or air pollution’s impacts. Even in its self-promoting Healthy Air Living section, you will find next to nothing.

Now try www.lung.org or its sister site www.stateoftheair.org. There, you can quickly access complete information, including the list of who is at greatest risk: children and teens; people age 65 and older; people with asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema; people with cardiovascular disease or diabetes; and people with low incomes. Of course, far too often we are at all at risk.

That’s why failing grades are in order for the Valley Air Board.

Weather or Not
Two agenda items at April’s board meeting further demonstrated the failure to communicate. To further its public relations blitz, the board approved a $900,000 ad agency contract for the coming year and voted to accept a glowing report on its no-burn fireplace program (yes, glowing). What was strikingly different in the discussions of the two items was the role weather played and did not play. In short, when air pollution is bad the weather is to blame; when air pollution levels drop, albeit temporarily, the weather is not even mentioned.

In the fireplace no-burn program discussion, this winter’s La Nina weather pattern was entirely at fault for the high levels of particle pollution, which in some areas lasted for two weeks or longer without a break. But when it came to the ad campaign, last year’s mild, breezy August never happened.

Now, with the arrival of ozone season, only a minute fraction of the nearly $1 million for billboards, TV commercials, radio ads and more will be used to warn people of high air pollution episodes. And then only when it is far above dangerous levels in the summer and not at all next fall and winter.

“…some men you just can’t reach.”
—Cool Hand Luke

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Kevin Hall is director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition based in Fresno, online at www.calcleanair.org and on Facebook. The CVAQ is a partnership of more than 70 community, medical, public health, environmental and environmental justice organizations representing thousands of residents in the San Joaquin Valley unified in their commitment to improve the health of Californians. Contact him at kevin@calcleanair.org or follow him on Twitter at SJVair.