Bakersfield, Kern County top list for worst air pollution in the nation

Bakersfield had the worst level of fine-particulate pollution in the nation in 2020-22 — a toxic mix of soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols that contribute to heart attacks, strokes and lung disease, according to the American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report.

The city, seated at the bowl-shaped southern end of the Central Valley, was found to have the third highest ozone pollution in the nation behind Visalia, and Los Angeles-Long Beach. It edged out seven other California regions, all of which placed in the worst 25 areas for ozone pollution in the nation, the report published Wednesday showed.

Kern County and Bakersfield both ranked the worst in the nation for average annual particulate pollution, a title the two have held perennially — including the past three years — since the Lung Association began creating its report in 1996.

The Lung Association report is based on data from local, state and federal government air monitoring stations, as well as statistics gathered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

While contributions are not listed in the report, Will Barrett, the senior director with the American Lung Association's Nationwide Clean Air Advocacy, said it’s well-known that Central California’s chemical stew is the product of tailpipe emissions from heavy-duty trucks and farm equipment that have for years been the biggest source of fine particulate pollution.

Oil refineries, manufacturing plants and wood burning — stoves in the winter, wildfires in the summer — are also major contributors, he added. These are cast against the backdrop of climate change, which has led to rising temperatures and intensified drought during that period.

“On the whole,” Barrett said, these failing grades come despite a steady decline in smog and soot levels over the last decade in areas across California. Fresno, for example, has improved every year since 2014 and San Joaquin County this year earned its first passing grade. In Bakersfield, the average number of high-ozone days has dropped 26% in the past decade — nearly 30 fewer days of dirty air.

But the progress pales in comparison to the sheer volume of polluted air. Air pollution aggravates asthma, triggers heart attacks, leads to heart and lung disease, and can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes. It can also stunt lung growth in children.

More than 90% of Californians breathe dirty air at some point during the year, the report found. The EPA standard for particulates is 150 micrograms per cubic meter of air. California’s standard is 51 micrograms.

Central Valley Air Quality Coalition coordinator Jasmin Martinez found the report to be another unsurprising reminder that oil and gas, as well as agricultural companies, are not held accountable for regulating their practices.

“At the same time we’re seeing time and money wasted on false solutions like carbon capture on oil fields which need to have a phase-out plan rather than a band-aid on the situation and a scaling up of some of the same operations and facilities that put us at the top of the rankings in the first place,” Martinez said.

There is also a looming warehouse boom, Martinez added, whereby out-of-town landowners are purchasing farmland made untenable and converting it to storage space.

Despite some of the toughest emission standards in the nation, and some of the most aggressive climate change goals, California would need of more regulation if it’s to ever have consistently clean air. That state’s standards are the nation’s strictest for particulate air pollution.

San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District communications manager Jaime Holt said that transportation continues to be the biggest contributor of pollutants in the Central Valley.

"We’ve got two of the busiest transportation highways on the West Coast with I-5 and (Highway) 99,” she said.

Holt touted her department's grants and programs that incentivize the transition from petroleum fuel to plug-in electric vehicles, and the regulations placed on logistics companies’ fleet count and miles driven to deliver goods. But the zero-emission infrastructure is still catching up, she added.

These clean-energy transitions, Martinez argues, are mostly done through taxpayer subsidies that are offered to already well-to-do businesses.

“There’s tons of strategies where we can turn over agricultural equipment that is producing a whole source of emissions,” Martinez said. “And yet they wait for an incentive to come out before they actually transition it despite being a billion-dollar industry and having the money to do that.”

But ultimately, Holt said, Central Valley communities are fighting against their own topography, which is hemmed by mountain ranges that trap heat and toxins.

“We’re basically a bowl,” Holt said of the valley. “And we’ve got weather that often puts a lid on this bowl.”

“We have to do more than almost anyone else in the nation,” Holt said.

Salinas was the lone California community listed on the healthiest cities by air particulates in the nation, as it has reported zero high-ozone days since 2012.

For more information, or to review the report, visit https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/msas/bakersfield-ca#pm24.