Examining fine particulate matter and cause-specific morbidity during the 2017 North San Francisco Bay wildfires.

BACKGROUND: Recent increases in wildfire frequency and severity necessitate better understanding of health effects of wildfire smoke to protect affected populations. OBJECTIVES: We examined relationships between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and morbidity during wildfires in California, and whether those relationships differed during the fire compared to a similar non-fire period. METHODS: For nine San Francisco Bay Area counties, daily county-level diagnosis-specific counts of emergency department visits (EDVs) and hospitalizations were linked with county-level estimates of daily mean PM2.5 during the October 2017 Northern California wildfires and similar October days in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Associations were estimated using Poisson regression. RESULTS: The median difference between county PM2.5 during the fire versus the non-fire period was 23.4 µg/m3, with days exceeding 80 µg/m3 in some counties. Over the entire study period, PM2.5 was most consistently linked to EDVs for respiratory disease (RREDV(lag0) per 23.4 µg/m3 increase: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.30), asthma, chronic lower respiratory disease (CLRD; RREDV(lag0): 1.18, 95% CI: 1.10, 1.27), and acute myocardial infarction (RREDV(lag0): 1.14, 95% CI: 1.03, 1.25). Increases in acute upper respiratory infections and decreases in mental/behavioral EDVs were observed but were sensitive to model specification, specifically the inclusion of time-related covariates. Comparing fire and non-fire period EDV associations, we observed indications that PM2.5 during the fire was more strongly associated with asthma (RRlag0: 1.46, 95% CI: 1.38, 1.55) compared to non-fire period PM2.5 (RRlag0: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.55, 1.08), and the opposite observed for dysrhythmia, with the asthma difference being particularly robust to model choice. For hospitalizations, the most robust PM2.5 relationships were positive associations with respiratory, CLRD, and diabetes, and inverse associations with pneumonia. Respiratory and CLRD effect estimates were generally similar or smaller than for EDVs. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated short-term PM2.5 levels from wildfire smoke appears to impact respiratory and other health domains.

Assessment of Regional Methane Emission Inventories through Airborne Quantification in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This study derives methane emission rates from 92 airborne observations collected over 23 facilities including 5 refineries, 10 landfills, 4 wastewater treatment plants (POTWs), 2 composting operations, and 2 dairies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Emission rates are measured using an airborne mass-balance technique from a low-flying aircraft. Annual measurement-based sectorwide methane emissions are 19,000 ± 2300 Mg for refineries, 136,700 ± 25,900 Mg for landfills, 11,900 ± 1,500 Mg for POTWs, and 11,100 ± 3,400 Mg for composting. The average of measured emissions for each refinery ranges from 4 to 23 times larger than the corresponding emissions reported to regulatory agencies, while measurement-derived landfill and POTW estimates are approximately twice the current inventory estimates. Significant methane emissions at composting facilities indicate that a California mandate to divert organics from landfills to composting may not be an effective measure for mitigating methane emissions unless best management practices are instituted at composting facilities. Complementary evidence from airborne remote sensing imagery indicates atmospheric venting from refinery hydrogen plants, landfill working surfaces, composting stockpiles, etc., to be among the specific source types responsible for the observed discrepancies. This work highlights the value of multiple measurement approaches to accurately estimate facility-scale methane emissions and perform source attribution at subfacility scales to guide and verify effective mitigation policy and action.

Effects of switching to lower sulfur marine fuel oil on air quality in the San Francisco Bay area.

Ocean-going vessels burning high-sulfur heavy fuel oil are an important source of air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Beginning in July 2009, an emission control area was put into effect at ports and along the California coastline, requiring use of lower sulfur fuels in place of heavy fuel oil in main engines of ships. To assess impacts of the fuel changes on air quality at the Port of Oakland and in the surrounding San Francisco Bay area, we analyzed speciated fine particle concentration data from four urban sites and two more remote sites. Measured changes in concentrations of vanadium, a specific marker for heavy fuel oil combustion, are related to overall changes in aerosol emissions from ships. We found a substantial reduction in vanadium concentrations after the fuel change and a 28-72% decrease in SO2 concentrations, with the SO2 decrease varying depending on proximity to shipping lanes. We estimate that the changes in ship fuel reduced ambient PM2.5 mass concentrations at urban sites in the Bay area by about 3.1 ± 0.6% or 0.28 ± 0.05 µg/m(3). The largest contributing factor to lower PM mass concentrations was reductions in particulate sulfate. Absolute sulfate reductions were fairly consistent across sites, whereas trace metal reductions were largest at a monitoring site in West Oakland near the port.

Health cobenefits and transportation-related reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the San Francisco Bay area.

OBJECTIVES: We quantified health benefits of transportation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). METHODS: Statistics on travel patterns and injuries, physical activity, fine particulate matter, and GHGE in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, were input to a model that calculated the health impacts of walking and bicycling short distances usually traveled by car or driving low-emission automobiles. We measured the change in disease burden in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) based on dose-response relationships and the distributions of physical activity, particulate matter, and traffic injuries. RESULTS: Increasing median daily walking and bicycling from 4 to 22 minutes reduced the burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes by 14% (32,466 DALYs), increased the traffic injury burden by 39% (5907 DALYS), and decreased GHGE by 14%. Low-carbon driving reduced GHGE by 33.5% and cardiorespiratory disease burden by less than 1%. CONCLUSIONS: Increased physical activity associated with active transport could generate a large net improvement in population health. Measures would be needed to minimize pedestrian and bicyclist injuries. Together, active transport and low-carbon driving could achieve GHGE reductions sufficient for California to meet legislative mandates.

Overshoot Bias and the National Ozone Standard.

The new ozone standard continues to require rounding ozone design values to the nearest 10 ppb. A rationale for the rounding convention has been that the design value for the ozone standard is biased upwards. It has been argued that rounding compensates for this overshoot bias. This paper investigates the degree of overshoot bias in the design values for the old and new standards under various assumptions about measurement error and autocorrelation. It was found that there can be substantial overshoot bias in the design value of older standard, but much less for the new standard's design value. Moreover, the total error in the new design value is on the order of 1-3% for reasonable assumptions about measurement error. This implies that rounding may tend to misclassify nonattainment areas as attainment. The results suggest that the rounding requirement for the new ozone standard may not be justified.