A Brief History…

By Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R.

This week, the American Lung Association released its annual “State of the Air” study on air pollution, which as always gave many areas of the country, including San Diego and Riverside counties, failing grades.

And as usual, most of the media simply regurgitated the findings. With a few honorable exceptions, there was no critical analysis of the study’s peculiar methodology. It used the worst air pollution in a region to judge the entire region, although that air pollution is often confined to a small area most residents don’t experience.

And in San Diego County, we get those localized reports daily through our Air Pollution Control District. The APCD provides color-coded maps and charts on its Web site showing the progress of air pollution throughout the day, while the Lung Association’s report makes no distinctions in how air pollution varies.

But pollution levels vary widely by geography. Prevailing winds push San Diego County air pollution inland, and Alpine regularly gets the brunt of it. While unfortunate for Alpine, this has little to do with pollution levels in coastal San Diego or inland North San Diego County. You can see this in the charts below.

This one below is a graphical map of actual San Diego County air pollution levels at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29.

And below is the pollution forecast for April 30. Notice there’s lots of green, and a few yellow rectangles. This shows how misleading it is to judge the whole county by the worst numbers.

The Lung Association report is useless for measuring pollution where people actually live and work.

But it’s perfect for hyping the air pollution problem year after year. The Lung Association has an economic interest: Public concern keeps donations flowing.

This qualifies as disinformation. And it’s nothing new; in 2003 I wrote about it in my science column for the North County Times. The Lung Association has never refuted the criticism. It just keeps churning out the same dishonest report year after year. And thoughtless or agenda-driven reporters keep on with the stenography.

Reporters who take this propaganda at face value have no right to complain how little trust the public places in them. They deserve to be mistrusted.

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DISCLAIMER: As with everything I write here, these views are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 5:33 am and is filed under media, politics, science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.