The Los Angeles area has the most ozone-damaged air in the country, according to the report card, or report card, from the American Lung Association, one of the nonprofit organizations that supports Proposition 30, which will be on the ballot next week.
Ozone is a type of pollution that prematurely ages lungs, affects eyes, nose and throat; it generates asthma and headaches that can become chronic, and alters the immune system.
The Los Angeles and Long Beach area have obtained almost consecutively since 2010 the rating of the worst air for health, mainly due to ozone at ground level, which is produced by the combustion of gasoline and diesel.
The Los Angeles County Department of Health reported that most residents in the area judge if there is pollution in the environment visually, because it can look like a cloud or mist when the air is more polluted.
But “certain types of pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide have little effect on visibility; very high concentrations of these gases can be present even on the clearest day,” reported the department.
The Union of Conscious Scientists, a group of more than ten thousand scientists against pollution, explained by its part that “cars, trucks and buses powered by fossil fuels are one of the main sources of air pollution.”
Non-electric vehicles “emit more than half of the nitrogen oxides of our air, and they are one of the largest emitters of gases associated with global warming in the United States.”
They say that repeated “scientific studies have identified that these pollutants have negative impacts on almost all organs of the body”.
They warned that the impact of air pollution can penetrate into the lungs, irritate the respiratory system, causing coughing, suffocation, and reduction in lung capacity.
Air pollution re can also block oxygen from the brain, heart and other vital organs, and the transportation sector, which also includes planes, ships and trains, contributes close to 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
On the economic side, the impact of air pollution in Los Angeles is multi-million dollar between medical costs, partial losses or total jobs, and impediments of various kinds.
According to GreenPeace calculations, “air pollution also cost approximately $32 billion ($32 billion) in Los Angeles in 2020”.
The amount is equivalent to a loss of more than $87 million every day of the year on average.
GreenPeace warned that “California had the highest cost of air pollution per capita in the world, at $2,700 per person” in 2020 what is statistics most recent completion of that organization.
In the world, this cost was only surpassed by that experienced by Tokyo due to air pollution, with $43 billion in the year.
For reasons like these, the organizations support the Proposition 30 on California ballots on November 8.
Proposition seeks to increase personal income taxes by 1.7 percent only for people who earn more than two million annually , or four million for a couple residing in California.
With this tax increase, according to calculations by proponents of the 20, A fund of between $3,500 and $5,000 million annually would be created.
The 80 percent of that fund would serve to help people who have less income in the state can acquire electric vehicles and to help install the network of electric recharging stations p for vehicles.
This investment would support the California state budget for those same purposes.
The remainder 20 Percent of the fund raised by the Proposition 30 will be used to help the state hire more firefighters and to pay for their training.
The proposed law that is presented to the voters focuses on two of the biggest problems related to pollution, the deterioration of the air and its impact on health, and fires that tend to be larger and more costly, due to the greenhouse effect caused by pollution.
To the Proposal 20 is also supported by the coalition of California Environmental Voters and the California Democratic Party, among others.