If today were an Ozone Action Day, would you know what that means? Would you care? Would you change your daily habits? The answer is likely no.
So, the question becomes: how much should we care about air quality? Ozone levels have generally increased in San Antonio and the issue of air quality, with governmental limits involved, is not surprisingly complicated. One thing that I think we can all agree on is that the air quality issue costing us money is not ideal.
BAD AIR QUALITY CAUSES
First, it’s important to note that bad air quality is NOT a new problem. Air quality in cities across the country, including San Antonio, have long tussled with the issue that involves a complicated entanglement of federal, state, and local policies mixed with business interests and of course, weather.
On a very basic level, air pollution is broken down into two categories: ozone and particulate matter.
Particulate matter are things like smoke, which we see drift up from fires in Mexico, and Saharan dust, which visits us every year. They’re bad, but there’s not much we can do about those or the weather that drives these pollutants to us. Ozone, however, is something we can partially control.
“We estimate that about 20% of our ozone is produced locally from local sources like combustion sources,” said Lyle Hufstetler, Natural Resources Project Administrator at the Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG). “We estimate about 80% comes from outside of area. Now, that can be from other areas in Texas. Often, when we get a cold front comes through, dirtier air coming in from the north like from Dallas and points beyond that as well.”
It should also be noted that this is AACOG’s estimation. Other groups have come up with different calculations.
WHAT IS OZONE?
Ozone is nothing more than three oxygen atoms bonded together, otherwise known as O3. You can think of ozone as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of gasses, because in parts of the atmosphere it’s good. In other parts, it’s bad.
In the upper part of our atmosphere, what you’ve probably heard referred to as the ozone layer, ozone is important and needed. It’s formed naturally from the interaction of ultraviolet (UV) radiation and oxygen. It protects you and I from harmful UV radiation.
However, in the lower part of the atmosphere, where we breathe, ozone is harmful. Here, it’s formed by photochemical reactions between volatile organic compounds known as (VOCs) and nitrous oxides (NOX). These are supplied from things like car exhausts and factories.
HOW AND WHERE IS IT MEASURED?
In a small closet inside a room at Government Canyon State Natural Area, a small station has a big role in monitoring ozone. It’s one of 25 monitoring sites the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), uses to measure the health of San Antonio’s air. The maintenance of the sites and the interpretation of the data falls under AACOG. Each sites measures a different part of the metro.
”The northwest side, where we are now, it does tend to be a little bit worse,” Hufstetler explained. “And that’s due to the prevailing winds being out of the southeast. So, they’ll travel over the city and that urban pollution plume gets carried off to the northwest.”
This is a perfect illustration that weather may play the biggest role of all as to where pollution ends up and how it collects over San Antonio.
“Once the fronts move through and we get our normal southeasterly flow from the gulf, it’s that switch in the winds when they go from north to southeasterly that kind of gives us a double dose of ozone,” Hufstetler said.
WHO IS MOST AFFECTED?
On days when ozone is particularly high, an Ozone Action Day is issued by TCEQ. On these days, we get bumped up to “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” when it comes to the air quality chart. Very rare does San Antonio’s air quality get any worse than this. These are days that will affect asthma sufferers.
“I don’t even need to,” said allergist Dr. Dennis Dilley when asked if he looks at the air quality levels. “They’ll come in here with asthma and I’ll know and I’ll look and see... ‘oh yes, today’s an orange alert day.’”
Asthma is a big problem in San Antonio.
”A lot of people deal with asthma,” Dilley said. “We have probably one of the highest per capita rates of asthma here.”
So, on an Ozone Action Day, many kids with asthma will skip recess outside. It does become relatively dangerous for a sector of our population.
“It’s just not healthy air. I mean, it’s pollutants,” Dilley explained. “And even if you’re not having respiratory problems, you don’t want to be breathing that. It’d be like putting your nose on the exhaust pipe of a car, you know. That’s how nasty it is, only you can’t really smell it.”
HOW DO FIX IT?
When an Ozone Action Day rolls around, the TCEQ will ask San Antonians to carpool, avoid idling their vehicle, and fill up their car only after 6 p.m., among other things. But, the fact of the matter is -- few if any heed the advice.
”If we all have the mentality that myself alone can’t move the needle, so I’m just going to count on everyone else, if we all have that mentality, then nothing is going to get done,” Hufstetler said.
It doesn’t help matters that during the COVID year of 2020, when there hardly any cars on the road, something counterintuitive happened.
”We would have expected a similar decrease in our ozone levels,” Hufstetler said. “Unfortunately, in April of 2020, we had two high ozone days, where in the previous years, we only had one.”
This kind of data leads to a fair question: Why should we even try?
”I would say that that was a snapshot in time. That was a set of weather conditions that were happening then,” Hufstetler explained. “If we make a long-term effort, those high ozone days, maybe the month that had bad ozone, it’ll get averaged out, it’ll be kind of wash, as a whole, if we’re reducing those ozone levels.”
It turns out the averaging out and math is important here, because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set an exact number to determine how policy is doled out and how the problem is addressed.
ATTAINMENT & NON-ATTAINMENT -- AND WHY IT’S GOING TO COST US
This brings us to the politics of it all, which as you might imagine, is complicated and full of red tape. There’s one number that’s important: 70 parts per billion (ppb). That’s the threshold the EPA has set for what’s called attainment. If a city’s metro ozone levels average out to be below that number, it’s in attainment. If the city ends up above, that leaves you in non-attainment.
If this threshold is set too high, the economy can suffer. Industry may not be able to sustain itself. Too low, and people’s health is at risk. The threshold was lowered in 2015, putting San Antonio in non-attainment status. Since then, we’ve not been able to lower our ozone to get back into attainment.
If you were curious:
”Dallas and Houston are a little bit worse off than San Antonio,” Hufstetler said.
El Paso also sits at non-attainment status.
At any rate, as long as San Antonio sits just above that number, the EPA expects us to do something about it. Beginning in 2025, per state government, Texas drivers will no longer have to get their cars safety inspected. That’s a nice change, except for that by November 2026, should San Antonio remain at non-attainment levels, gasoline-powered cars, model years 1996 and newer in Bexar County will have to start getting emission inspections. Bexar will join several other counties in Texas that already do this.
”At this point, we don’t know how much that’s going to be,” Hufstetler said. The TCEQ has recommended $11.50, but later this month it’s going to go before the commission for a final approval and it could change.”
Austin, by the way, which remains in attainment, has been doing voluntarily emission inspections for years.
Technology is expected to help, as electric cars become more affordable and accessible, but as for whether San Antonio ozone levels will drop significantly enough to return to attainment remains up for debate.
Additionally, non-attainment status will also trigger regulations on business. This can negatively affect the economy. According to a study by the City of San Antonio, those most affected by non-attainment would be manufacturing, construction, and large entities.
It’s yet another growing pain of a rapidly growing city.