"Bad air" days may be better?

In the story I wrote last week about the American Lung Association’s "State of the Air" report, quite a few California cities -- including Merced -- measured high levels of ozone. Ozone or smog is a summertime air pollution problem, extending from May through September.

Spokespeople from the lung association said those numbers would have been portrayed even higher if the Environmental Protection Agency's new, more stringent ozone scoring system had been taken into account. Now, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has adopted that more "health-protective" scoring standard.

Days that were previously classified as "good" air days may now be ranked as "moderate," and some moderate days may now be ranked as "unhealthy."

While this might make the situation appear worse, days now classified as moderate and good days will actually signify lower, cleaner ozone concentrations.

Let's just hope for more of those days. While a tougher scoring system is a step in the right direction, activists continue to call for tougher requirements on the actual causes of this ozone.