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Mostly clear. Low 77F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Mostly clear. Low 77F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east towards the foothills from Panorama Park.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east toward the foothills from Panorama Park.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east toward the foothills from Panorama Park.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east towards the foothills from Panorama Park.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east toward the foothills from Panorama Park.

Despite Wednesday being a relatively clear day, air pollution is visible looking east toward the foothills from Panorama Park.

Bakersfield and Kern continued to have some of the nation's worst air quality between 2018 and 2020, according to a new report that nevertheless highlighted significant local improvement, particularly with regard to reductions in ozone pollution.

The American Lung Association's 23rd annual State of the Air update, released late Wednesday, concluded Bakersfield had the worst particulate pollution in the country for the third consecutive year, by one measure, and the second-worst after Fresno by a different measure.

The city's ozone pollution ranked second-worst in the United States behind the Los Angeles-Long Beach area, while Kern was listed runner-up in the category of the most polluted places to live in the country, behind Mono County.

Even so, Bakersfield was one of three cities, along with Fresno and San Diego, singled out as having posted better ozone numbers than a year earlier. Researchers also pointed out Bakersfield has made big strides during the past decade.

Will Barrett, the lung association's national senior director of clean air advocacy, noted Bakersfield has seen what he characterized as a steady and healthy drop to 95.2 days when local ozone surpassed the national standard, down from 97.2 in last year's report and 103.2 the year before that.

"That's very good news," Barrett said. "We're below 100 days of unhealthy ozone pollution" for only the third time in the report's history.

The report focuses on the health risks of poor air quality at a time when changing weather patterns — warmer temperatures and bigger, more frequent wildfires — are worsening the situation. It calls for phasing out internal combustion engines and making cities more walkable, in part to protect communities of color that overall are 61 percent more likely to live in unacceptably dirty air.

Air pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart attack, stroke, reproductive harm, lung cancer and premature death, according to the association.

Topography and meteorology are a big part of the reason why air quality is so bad in the southern Central Valley. Surrounding mountains trap pollution that's created locally or which flows in from more highly populated areas. Also, hot valley summers contribute to the formation of smog.

Representatives of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District said the improvement in recent years, not just in ozone pollution but also in particulates relative to a decade ago, reflects many years of work on regulations placed on stationary sources of pollution, as well as taxpayer incentives that fund replacement of equipment like lawn mowers and diesel engines.

Jon Klassen, the district's director of air quality science, pointed out what the lung association noted as well: Airborne pollution across the West suffered in 2020 because of historically bad wildfires.

Speakers at a morning phone conference hosted by the lung association said wildfires are one aspect of climate changes that are worsening air quality. More needs to be done, and quickly, to phase out greenhouse gases and particulate matter, they said, proposing measures like faster deployment of zero-emissions vehicles and urban design that reduces the need for cars. They also supported prescribed burns, and public education to help prevent the spread of large wildfires.

One of the speakers, Executive Officer Richard Corey of the California Air Resources Board, said about half of California's greenhouse gas emissions originate in the transportation sector, which he said was also responsible for 80 percent of nitrogen oxides leading to ozone, and 95 percent of particular matter from diesel fuel.

"The fact is, we can't get to clean, healthy air for all Californians, or achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets, without transitioning away from petroleum," Corey said. He later added that heavy-duty vehicles such as marine vessels and airplanes can't easily be electrified, and so liquid fuels will probably be around for years to come.

The two primary measures by which Bakersfield failed to register year-over-year air quality improvement are related to particulates.

Short-term particulate days, in which Bakersfield ranked just below No. 1 Fresno, reflects a weighted average of the number of days when the amount of tiny particles in local air exceeds national standards. According to the report, Bakersfield had 41 such days between 2018 and 2020, which was 28 percent more than it had between 2017 and 2019. There were 58.8 of those days between 2006 and 2008.

The city's annual particulate levels, used to describe particle pollution over the course of a year, increased by 4 percent to reach a reading of 17.6, which was slightly better than Bakersfield's reading for the three years that ended in 2018. Between 2006 and 2008, it came in at 21.5.

The association's report was based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality System. It is available online at Stateoftheair.org.

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Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 263,145

Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 248,513

Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated: 73.99

Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated: 83.36

Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department

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